Outreachy - Guix Data Service: questions about improving the data for derivation comparisons.

[Luciana Lima Brito]

Hi,

This email is mostly addressed to Christopher Baines, due to the
Outreachy.

In the last email to me, you said this about my next steps on
contributing:

"In terms of what to do next, you could continue on this derivation
comparison path. Some of the code you've got here could be used to make
the data better right when the database is queried. Take the recursive
field for outputs for example, it would be better to convert it to a
boolean where the database query is made."

I looked for something related to that in the project and I found
interesting stuff on comparison.scm, is this the relevant file to make
the data better? I could see that the queries are made in there.

For example, the test I used for the outputs field "recursive"
(recursive. ,(string=? recursive 't')) on controller.scm I moved to the
function derivation-outputs-differences-data on comparison.scm, and it
worked properly. Is this the kind of change I should be doing?

In case of a yes, which kind of improvements should I be aiming for?

Furthermore, should I try to achieve any improvements to the queries
itself, or this is not necessary?

-- 
Best Regards,

Luciana Lima Brito
MSc. in Computer Science