bug#53657: inconsistent parsing of the channel sexp's

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Attila Lendvai <attila@lendvai.name> skribis:

> pull.scm does this with channel files, e.g. with /etc/guix/channels.scm:
>
> (load* file (make-user-module '((guix channels))))
>
> i.e. this way field values are EVAL'd. beside the big can of worms that this 
> opens up, it also means that e.g. the name field must be quoted: (name 'guix).
>
> then at other occurrences of channels, an sexp parser is used to read them, 
> e.g. in the 'dependencies field of a .guix-channel entry. see 
> READ-CHANNEL-METADATA in guix/channels.scm.
>
> here the name field is not EVAL'd, and thus it must be specified without 
> quotes: (name guix).
>
> this leads to an actual issue that channel dependencies don't match up, 
> unless the name is without quotes in the dependencies list specification.

Yes, but that’s okay: the ‘.guix-channel’ file has a syntax that looks
similar but is different from that of ‘~/.config/guix/channels.scm’, as
you explained (and as the manual explains, I think.)  This is on
purpose.

I understand it might look confusing but I’m not sure there’s much we
can do.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.