Re: 16/16: doc: Discourage the use of texlive as input

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Pierre!

address@hidden skribis:

> commit dc56dc025df0b7ea6915ad1061f8d189d641fe35
> Author: Pierre Neidhardt <address@hidden>
> Date:   Fri Dec 14 23:06:06 2018 +0100
>
>     doc: Discourage the use of texlive as input
>     
>     * doc/contributing.texi (Submitting Patches): Discourage the use of 
> texlive as
>       input.
> ---
>  doc/contributing.texi | 10 ++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/doc/contributing.texi b/doc/contributing.texi
> index c55eb63..9f705d2 100644
> --- a/doc/contributing.texi
> +++ b/doc/contributing.texi
> @@ -477,6 +477,16 @@ often better to clone the repository.  Don't use the 
> @command{name} field in
>  the URL: it is not very useful and if the name changes, the URL will probably
>  be wrong.
>  
> address@hidden
> +Try to minimize the weight of the inputs to make the transitive closure as
> +small as possible (@pxref{Invoking guix size}).  Use @command{native-inputs}
> +and @command{inputs} appropriately.  It's sometimes sufficient to use the
> address@hidden version of a package as input, e.g. @command{bash-minimal}
> +instead of @command{bash}.  In particular, avoid adding @command{texlive} as 
> a
> +dependency: because of its extreme size, it's both heavy on the build farms
> +and on the users who would like to build or hack the package from source.  
> Use
> address@hidden or @command{texlive-union} instead.

The text looks fine but I find it a bit long and more importantly it
partly duplicates an item that’s just above :-), which mentions ‘guix
size’ but not ‘texlive’.

So I’d rather not add this item because it shows that this section is
already too long to be read.

Perhaps a ‘lint’ checker warning about ‘texlive’ as an input would be
more appropriate?  WDYT?

In general I think it’s a good idea to discuss changes to the guidelines
beforehand, as per ‘HACKING’.

Anyway thanks for all the latest TeX Live improvements.  It’s great you
managed to replace all these ‘texlive’ dependencies with
‘texlive-union’!

Ludo’.