Subject: Re: [bug#30037] [PATCH] gnu: whois: Remove bundled mkpasswd.

From: Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2018 17:46:17 +0100

ng0,

ng0 wrote on 09/01/18 at 07:51:
> or you could move the mkpasswd to its own output.

That's not (a step towards) unbundling, though, is it?

> I think you want to look into the old discussions around this. I
> don't remember why this wasn't chosen, all I know is that upstream
> made it very clear to me that they won't separate mkpasswd.

OK, I found this thread[0] on guix-devel. I'd only checked guix-patches.

I can somewhat understand your use of the word ‘bundle’ in the TODO
comment — or at least where it came from — but it's pretty misleading in
that context. As you rightly noted:

  Ludo'> Why to you call that “unbundling”?
  ng0>   Wrong choice of words.
  [...]
  ng0>   It's annoying that two unrelated applications are thrown
  ng0>   into one distribution/package.

It would have been nice to adjust the comment at that point, or mention
that this ‘mkpasswd’ is unrelated to the better-known Expect ‘mkpasswd’.

(Hark, this one doesn't even mk passwds! For maximum irony, it was
 renamed from ‘cryptpw’, which perfectly described its purpose...)

Since this is its own thing, for better or worse, I agree with the
others in that thread that it should remain part of this package/output
until upstream repents.

Kind regards,

T G-R

[0]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-01/msg00504.html