Re: guile-bash updated source url

[Mark H Weaver]

Hi David,

address@hidden writes:

> On Fri, 3 May 2019, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>
>> address@hidden skribis:
>>
>>> This is my first contribution to guix and it's just a minor fix for
>>> the guile-bash package which had an outdated source url. I was able to
>>> retrieve the same revision of the package via the software-heritage
>>> project's website and upload it to gitlab. Then I installed it
>>> successfully via guix package -f my-guile-bash.scm using the gitlab
>>> url, then copied it to the existing guile-xyz.scm in gnu/packages.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> --- a/gnu/packages/guile-xyz.scm
>>> +++ b/gnu/packages/guile-xyz.scm
>>> @@ -294,23 +294,21 @@ dictionary and suggesting spelling corrections.")
>>>      (license license:gpl3+)))
>>>
>>>  (define-public guile-bash
>>> -  ;; This project is currently retired.  It was initially announced here:
>>> -  ;; <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2015-02/msg00003.html>.
>>> -  (let ((commit "1eabc563ca5692b3e08d84f1f0e6fd2283284469")
>>> +    (let ((commit "49099fe6a592aa3b8001e826b939869fe5811785")
>>>          (revision "0"))
>>
>> Why is the commit different?  Looks like it’s more than just a mirror.
>>
>> If you made changes on top of the original code, that’s actually great.
>> However, I’d prefer to first see a patch that simply changes the URL,
>> not the commit and hash, and later updates to a different revision.
>>
>> Does that make sense?
>>
>
> I made a commit since I was unable figure out how to create a
> git-mirror from the Software Heritage website but was able to retrieve
> the correct commit as a tarball. Then I guix init'ed the folder, and
> made a commit in order to push it to gitlab.

Hmm.  If I understand correctly, it sounds like this will discard the
entire previous git history.  If you want to maintain this package and
host the repository yourself (as opposed to us relying on Software
Heritage), I would advocate trying again until you can properly clone
the existing repository.  We can help if needed.  It's important to get
this right now, because git history cannot be rewritten after the fact,
and it's important to preserve the existing history.

      Thanks,
        Mark