distinguishing between applications and libraries

[Robert Vollmert]

Hi,

I’m currently packaging some tools that would add a decent
amount of source-only dependencies. (Some from npm, some for
elm).

Clearly they should somehow be packaged properly in order
to track licensing information and refer to upstream. On the
other hand, it doesn’t feel particularly useful to add a
number of packages that no user is ever going to want to
install (or even search for) by hand.

Has it been considered to track applications and libraries
separately? Along the lines of:

- package definitions could have a `type` field, or a `library`
  flag or similar
- `guix search` would ignore library packages by default
- maybe there’s some other simplifications to make in library
  package definitions? I’d be happy to not copy over a
  long description that no-one’s ever going to read. :)

Cheers
Robert