Re: v2: A proposal of a consistent set of clear rules and guidelines involving snippets, phases and patches.

[Maxime Devos]

On 08-08-2022 23:51, Andreas Enge wrote:

> > 20.4.5.3 Fixing technical issues (compilation errors, test failures, other bugs
> > ...)
> > Usually, a bug fix comes in the form of a patch copied from upstream or another
> > distribution. In that case, simply adding the patch to the 'patches' field is
> > the most convenient and usually does not cause any problems; there is no need
> > to rewrite it as a snippet or a phase.
> > If no ready-made patch already exists, then choosing between a patch or a
> > snippet is a matter of convenience. However, there are two things to keep in
> > mind:
> > First, when the fix is not Guix-specific, it is strongly desired to upstream
> > the fix to avoid the additional maintenance cost to Guix. As upstreams cannot
> > accept a snippet, writing a patch can be a more efficient use of time.
> > Secondly, if the fix of a technical issue embeds a store file name, then it has
> > to be a phase. Otherwise, if a store file name was embedded in the source, the
> > result of 'guix build --source' would be unusable on non-Guix systems and
> > likely also unusable on Guix systems of another architecture.
> >       
> Do you mean "phase" here instead of "snippet"? That is what I usually do...
> My practice is to use a patch when the goal is to eventually change the
> source code upstream (or it is already changed upstream and we can take a
> patch from their git repo, say), and a phase when one cannot expect upstream
> to incorporate the changes since they are specific to Guix (like embedding
> store paths, as Liliana writes, where apparently a phase is the only option
> anyway).
>

I meant 'snippet' in this subsubsection. Bugfixes seem useful to have in the result of "guix build --source", and appear to be required to be in there for the 'corresponding source' thing.

Greetings,
Maxime.

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