GNU bug report logs - #44460
[PATCH] processes: Optionally normalize recutils output.

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From: Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org>
To: John Soo <jsoo1 <at> asu.edu>
Cc: 44460 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: [bug#44460] Add copyright lines
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2020 21:29:19 +0100

Hi,

John Soo <jsoo1 <at> asu.edu> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org> 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?

Yes it does!  Initially I wondered if it was a term used in recutils,
but apparently it’s not.

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

Yeah.

> 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?

Sure.

Thinking more about it, to me the appeal of recutils is that it’s both
human- and machine-readable.  But here we end up having a specific
machine-readable variant.  But yeah, maybe that’s unavoidable.

>>> 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?

Yes (you mean in addition to ‘-f normalized’, right?).

Thanks,
Ludo’.

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