Subject: Re: [bug#44460] Add copyright lines

From: John Soo <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2020 07:37:39 -0800

Hi Ludo,

Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> writes:

>> * Still not normalized - how can I search for just the child processes
>>   associated with a particular command?
>
> Like:
>
>   guix processes | recsel -e 'ClientCommand ~ "xyz"' -p ChildProcess
>
> ?
>
> Actually what does “normalized” mean in this context?

Excellent question. I was thinking along the lines of database
normalization. The default output has multi-valued fields for child
processes, so the idea is to make them their own record set.  Does that
make sense?

An aside - Probably to be entirely honest about normalizing the output,
locks really would be in a separate record set too.

Another challenge is making sure the user can understand what
"normalized" means.  I am not sure readers of the manual/cli help will
be able to infer what it means from context.  On the other hand, it is
such a small use case that it seems imbalanced to provide a lot of
background for the term "normal". What do you think?

>> I wouldn't be opposed to splitting ChildProcess into ChildPID and
>> ChildCommand.  I would like it best if that change was made in addition
>> to adding the normalized version, since the normalized version allows
>> more functionality.
>
> I would think it’s OK to break compatibility on just these
> “ChildProcess” fields.

Ok. Would it be ok if I put that in a separate commit?

Thanks again!

- John