Subject: Re: [bug#36043] [PATCH] Add Geany

From: Arun Isaac <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2019 15:24:22 +0530

>> I think we should go ahead with our unbundled shared library Scintilla
>> package. We could also contribute our work upstream to Scintilla and
>> they seem willing to accept it.
>
> OTOH, using the static library is possibly (I failed at that, too)
> straightforward, in the sense that we would not patch Scintilla. It is
> worth considering this, too.

I would prefer the shared library because it is more efficient on
memory/disk usage and it seems cleaner and more modular. However,
scintilla is a small library and is not used by too many packages,
therefore the advantages are small. Meanwhile, patching scintilla to
build a shared library is messy and using the static library would
indeed be easier. But, if we are using the static library, why should we
unbundle at all?

I don't know if Guix has a clear policy on these matters. I think we
should consult guix-devel and ask for others' opinions.

> In any case, I do not volunteer to contribute our work upstream as it is
> still above my pay grade.

No problem, I understand.

> Scintilla's license has one more clause, but we can ask Guix devel.

I guess we should use the hpnd license now, as discussed in guix-devel.

> And what about the lib/, i.e., when should it be "/lib/name" instead
> of "/lib/"

I don't have as good an answer for this. A quick look at my
~/.guix-profile/lib shows almost all packages having their shared
libraries in /lib, not in /lib/name. And, just including scintilla in
geany's inputs and passing '-lscintilla' in geany_LDFLAGS was enough for
the linker to find libscintilla.so correctly. So, I assumed I had done
it right. :-P