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Emacs packaging: do we need to pull existing dependencies ?


From: Cayetano Santos
Subject: Emacs packaging: do we need to pull existing dependencies ?
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2023 09:13:57 +0100
User-agent: mu4e 1.8.13; emacs 29.0.50


Hello Guix,

I’m referring here to the way we handle propagated-inputs in package
 definitions, when dependencies are already present in the latest
 stable emacs we provide (28.2 as for today.)

 Think for example on all org-packages which depend on (and whose
package definition declare as a propagated-input) emacs-org. This is just an example, as many other similar examples may be found (and
 more to come on the upcoming 29.1).

From one side, it is up to the upstream package to declare in the package-requires fields all of its dependencies. Should not be our concern, as packagers, to take care of fixing / replacing that in any way. But, from another perspective, most of these packages include package-requires coherent to previous versions of emacs, which is not
 the case of guix.

So, do we need to pull most up to date dependencies, even if already present in current emacs, when upstream package requires them to keep backward compatibility ? Do we assume that guix emacs (28.2) already includes them, and remove the dependency from the inputs ? Is it a good strategy to deal with two different versions of a dependency ?

Say for example emacs-org-roam@2.2.2: it requires emacs-org 9.4, which is not specified in the package definition, meaning we always pull the latest available. Do we have to, provided that emacs releases with org ? Maybe there is already a clear rule about this topic, but to me this
 is not clear. We have package definitions with both criteria.

My two cents: let’s keep things as simple as possible. The lower the dependencies, the simpler the maintenance. I don’t see the point on pulling emacs-org@latest, provided that emacs already includes the minimum required org version. Same logic applies to all the rest.

What do you think ?

Cayetano



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