Subject: [bug#27344] [PATCH v3 7/8] gnu: Add qucs.

From: Theodoros Foradis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 20:07:26 +0300

Hello,

Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Hi,
>
> Theodoros Foradis <[email-masked]> skribis:
>
>> * gnu/packages/engineering.scm (qucs): New variable.
>
> [...]
>
>> +    (propagated-inputs
>> +     `(("gcc-toolchain" ,gcc-toolchain-5))) ; for freehdl
>
> What’s the reason for this?
>
> Propagated inputs should be used sparsely because they “pollute” user
> profiles.  Here we’d be forcing a big package, and a specific version of
> that, in user profiles, which is not OK.
>
> Apart from that the patch LGTM though, so if we can remove these two
> lines, we can commit.

Freehdl is a VHDL to C compiler, so for qucs and qucs-s to be able to do
VHDL simulations, there should be a gcc toolchain and libtool in the
user environment (libtool should be propagated as well, after the phase
removal from the freehdl package).

I think it *should* be OK to remove gcc-toolchain from the
propagated-inputs, if we provide the user with some kind of message,
that they should add a gcc-toolchain and libtool in their environment if
they want to do VHDL simulations.

Maybe it should be preferable to add a message along those lines in the
package descriptions of those 2 packages (qucs and qucs-s)?

WDYT?

-- 
Theodoros Foradis