Re: [PATCH] ui: 'package->recutils' serializes the source field.

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Alex Kost <address@hidden> writes:

> David Craven (2016-08-10 17:13 +0300) wrote:
>
>>> Even so, if one insisted on using the recutils output in a programmatic
>>> fashion (e.g. in a bash script), it would be best to run “guix build
>>> --source” on the package names to obtain the actual source tarballs that
>>> are used by Guix.
>>
>> I don't disagree. Alex what do you think?
>
> Do you mean about your original proposal?  I am for it: I don't
> comprehend why the source URL can't be displayed (especially since a
> user can easily find it anyway), but I don't understand FSDG well enough
> to judge, so I prefer not to participate in this discussion.

I have previously stated that I’m not convinced that we really need a
serialisation of the “source” field in the user-facing recutils output.
The patch was a welcome demonstration of how this feature would look
like.

As to the question about whether printing the plain upstream source URLs
has FSDG implications I suggest that those who think that this change
would be an improvement bring it up for discussion on the
gnu-linux-libre mailing list, as we don’t want to ignore the concerns
brought up by Mathieu and Mark.

> (I hope this thread will not tear Guix contributors apart)

It won’t :)  I think it’s obvious that there has been some
miscommunication in this thread.  We may be able to avoid this in the
future if everyone made a conscious effort at being courteous when
writing and tolerant when reading.  It is easy to miscommunicate in a
textual medium.

~~ Ricardo