Re: [PATCH] gnu: alacritty: Update to 0.7.1.

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me@tobias.gr> writes:

> Are you sure Gnome 3 doesn't run X?

I don't know. I use Gnome 3 on Debian 10 and reports "Wayland" as
"Windowing system" (translation is mine).

OTOH, I know that some Wayland-specific applications, e.g., "wob",
refuse to run in it. So it might as well be an hybrid beast.

> I'd be suprised (and interested) if
>
>  DISPLAY= $(guix time-machine --commit=3e10f0e -- \
>       build alacritty)/bin/alacritty
>
> works for you.  It should complain and fail to launch at all, because
> it can't connect to the legacy X(wayland) server.

The command above fails for me, indeed.

> I don't know.  Maybe more testing, or pinging the original author. No
> definitive answers here.

It's difficult to do more testing without knowing what to test. It is
a terminal emulator. I launched it and executed a couple of commands in
it.

Moreover, the original author hasn't updated the package since it was
added, a year ago. So I guess they were not interested in keeping it up
to date.

I'm not pretending the process could not be improved on my side. However
in this particular case, the improvements are not obvious. Also, on
complicated packages such as this one, I think some hiccups are going to
happen anyway. Yet, it is obviously better than not updating them at
all.

>> Please bear in mind that:
>> 1. it was not a small version bump, so many things could have
>> changed in
>>    the package definition;
>
> Right, I had to bump the version numbers, but it wasn't an
> unreasonable amount of work.

For large version bumps, I tend to discard old tweaks first and check if
the program runs without them. Otherwise, we might pile up cruft in
package definitions forever.

> Agreed on both counts: it's a gross hack[0], and it deserves
> a comment.  I should have added one and will do so now.

Thank you. 

It might also be interesting to add the command "DISPLAY= $(guix build
alacrity)/bin/alacritty" in the comment so anyone can try it out before
updating the package.

WDYT?

Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou