Subject: [bug#34449] [PATCH] gnu: Add trydiffoscope.

From: Vagrant Cascadian <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2019 00:16:42 -0800

On 2019-02-12, Julien Lepiller wrote:
> Le 12 février 2019 03:08:36 GMT+01:00, Vagrant Cascadian <[email-masked]> a écrit :
>>
>>* gnu/packages/package-management (trydiffoscope): New variable.
...
>>+    (synopsis "Compare files and archives in depth")
>>+    (description
>>+     "This is a minimal diffoscope client that connects to the
>>service:
>>+
>>+https://try.diffoscope.org.
>>+
>>+Diffoscope tries to get to the bottom of what makes files or
>>directories
>>+different.  It recursively unpacks archives of many kinds and
>>transforms
>>+various binary formats into more human readable forms to compare them.
>> It can
>>+compare two tarballs, ISO images, or PDFs just as easily.")
>>+    (license license:gpl3+)))
>>+
>> (define-public python-anaconda-client
>>   (package
>>     (name "python-anaconda-client")

> Iiuc, this is a client to connect to a service that runs diffoscope
> for you. But we already have diffoscope, so what's the point?

Yes, that's the jist of it.  The main advantage is that it has a much
smaller dependency chain locally.

I find it useful on some of the not-particularly-fast ARM systems I've
been running GNU Guix, where storage may be limited or slow, and
substitutes may not be available as often, and build times
are... remarkable.

> Also this looks like saass to me, so I think we should refrain from
> adding it to guix.

It is essentially SaaSS.  The server-side is at least licensed under the
AGPL, if that mitigates concerns somewhat.

I'm not sure it supports it out of the box yet, but I suspect upstream
would be amenable to patches to make it easy for people to run their own
"diffoscope" services.

> What do you think?

I thought it was useful enough to be worth submitting, though I'd
understand if it's deemed inappropriate for GNU Guix. Still learning the
ropes. :)

live well,
  vagrant