Re: guix refresh --update Removes Needed Dependencies

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi jgart,

"jgart" <jgart@dismail.de> skribis:

> ./pre-inst-env guix refresh --update python-sphinx

[...]

> -           ;; The Sphinx LaTeX library '\RequirePackage' or \\usepackage
> -           ;; these:
> -           texlive-amsfonts             ;amsmath, amssymb, amstext
> -           texlive-amsmath
> -           texlive-capt-of
> -           texlive-carlisle             ;remreset

To avoid this problem one can add package properties such as
‘updater-extra-native-inputs’ in this case:

  
https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-refresh.html#index-updater_002dextra_002dinputs_002c-package-property

However, the way it’s implemented right now, you have to list the name
of every input that should be preserved by ‘guix refresh -u’, which is
inconvenient in this particular case because there are many of them.

I can think of two ways to improve on that:

  1. Use one of the ‘texlive-scheme-*’ packages instead of this long
     list.  :-)

  2. Change the code to interpret extra inputs are regexps instead of
     names.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.