Subject: bug#43303: GCC package name

From: zimoun <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2020 10:34:29 +0200

Dear,

Thank you for the feedback.

On Thu, 10 Sep 2020 at 07:22, Jeffrey Walton <[email-masked]> wrote:

> It took me about 15 minutes to install GCC on Guix because Guix named
> the GCC package libgccjit.

It is a common "mistake" and there is an entry in the manual about that:

https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/guix.html#The-GCC-toolchain

Moreover, I am not sure what you want is 'libgccjit' but 'gcc-toolchain'.

> These are the names developers expect for the compiler. They don't
> expect a name like libgccjit.

However, you are right.  Something is wrong with "guix search", for example:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
guix search gcc | recsel -p name,relevance | head -11
name: libgccjit
relevance: 11

name: gccmakedep
relevance: 11

name: gccgo
relevance: 11

name: gcc-toolchain
relevance: 11
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

It is unfortunate and the synopsis of 'libgccjit' should be more
descriptive than "GNU Compiler Collection".

> With the aliases in place, a command like 'guix install gcc' works as expected.

As said above, the right command is "guix install gcc-toolchain".

> Without the aliases (and absent a sane package name), people have to
> lookup the documentation and read how to use the package manager for a
> simple task like installing the compiler. When 50 or 100 developers
> waste 15 minutes of their time, that's about 1 man-week wasted.
> There's no reason to waste man-weeks on simple tasks.

I understand the frustration.  What could be improved in the manual?

How did you process after

  $ guix install gcc
  guix install: error: gcc: unknown package

?  Which terms did you use with "guix search"?

All the best,
simon