Subject: [bug#42456] [PATCH] gnu: Rename python-hy to hy.

From: zimoun <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2020 16:40:33 +0200

Dear,

On Sat, 25 Jul 2020 at 17:45, Jesse Gibbons <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> Though I do not know much about hy, I do know the following:
>
> - There are some libraries written in hy[0].
>
> - There are tools written in hy specifically designed to handle hy.[1]
>
> - Some hy libraries contain macros that I don't think compile into
> python. It looks at first glance like hyclib[2] and hyiter[3] are
> examples of such packages, though I have not confirmed.

Hy uses the Python VM.  Basically, the Hy Lisp is transformed into an
AST (from ast import *) i.e. Python internals then evaluated using the
Python VM (CPython or PyPy).
Other said, any Hy code compiles to Python (and vice versa :-)).

> - The libraries and programs I have found written in hy look like they
> would use python-build-system. If we see patterns in defining these
> packages, we can always provide a hy-build-system for convenience.

I do not think it makes sense having 'hy-build-system' because Hy uses
all the Python machinery, not to say Hy is simply Python with
parenthensis. ;-)
Other said, Python code can import Hy code, and vice versa, and not
because there is "bindings" but because it is the same AST
representation.

Last, I am not convinced that Hy deserves a rename since it is another
Python flavor.  Well, similarly than python-on-guile which is in
gnu/packages/guile-xyz.scm

Cheers,
simon