Subject: Re: bug#26264: [PATCH 0/1] Use '@' to separate name, version in package-full-name

From: Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2017 16:57:06 +0200

Alex,

(I'm tempted to CC bug #26239 to mirror this discussion there, but I'm
not sure if debbugs would DTRT.)

On 26/03/17 14:25, Alex Sassmannshausen wrote:
> There are several other approaches that could be taken:
> 
> * change the behaviour of package-full-name by default to use '@'.

This is the tabula-rasa (well, ʕノ•ᴥ•ʔノ ︵ ┻━┻) approach I took myself.

> This would result in significant semantic changes in different places
> in Guix, where '-' is expected.

Could you expand on what these are?

My assumptions were:

  - This touches mainly (only? but then I don't use fancy things
    like emacs-guix) UI messages, or I missed it.

  - If someone's scripts do rely on parsing this kind of output, they're
    living on borrowed time, and will need to fix their scripts anyway.

  - ‘-’'s been deprecated for quite a long while, and the next
    core-updates cycle is a good time to purge the last remnants of it.
    Of course, this patch is about 2 cycles old by now...

  - If we're rebuilding the whole world for this we should get it right.

These assumptions may well be wrong (hence the call for feedback).

Thoughts?

T G-R