Subject: Re: [bug#37200] [PATCH] gnu: Add roswell.

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2019 14:05:56 +0200

Hi Pierre,

Pierre Neidhardt <[email-masked]> skribis:

> Thanks for the review!
>
> After some discussion with upstream, it does not seem that Roswell can
> be used without using a binary blob of SBCL:
>
> https://github.com/roswell/roswell/issues/387
>
> So I don't think that makes it a good fit for a Guix package.
>
> A few options:
>
> - Patch Roswell so that it takes Guix' SBCL instead of its own (could be
> a lot of work).
>
> - Patchelf the binary blob.

It’s clear that “patchelf the binary blob” is not an option in Guix.

The description for Roswell says it’s a tool for “installing and
managing Common Lisp implementations”.  If its job is precisely to
download and run pre-built binaries, then perhaps that would require
significant changes in Roswell itself so that it patches the binaries it
downloads?

But then again, if Roswell is about downloading pre-built binaries, we
should be careful about what’s going on.  After all, that might be
partly redundant with what Guix does, except that those binaries it
downloads may be non-reproducible or may even lack and build recipe
altogether.

So… the story about these pre-built binaries raises a red flag for me,
and I’m not sure what can be done here.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.