Subject: Re: bug#45476: [PATCH] gnu: syncthing: Update to 1.12.0.

From: Leo Famulari <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2021 15:49:18 -0500

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 04:09:00PM +0100, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> > * gnu/packages/syncthing.scm (syncthing): Update to 1.12.0.
> >   [source]: Do not delete bundled dependencies, maintaining the
> >   syncthing package without them is too much trouble. Syncthing's upstream
> >   seems committed to including only Free Software in their releases.
> 
> A large part of the hard unbundling work was already done, though, so
> intuitively I think we should not lose it.  Leo, WDYT?

That's correct.

However, the mechanisms used to build Syncthing (and to build Go
software in general) have changed since that work was done, and the
go-build-system we have can no longer build recent versions of Syncthing
except by using the bundled source code.

We need to overhaul the go-build-system if we want to continue offering
unbundled Go packages. I have not found the time to work on this. If
anyone is interested in supporting this work, please get in touch! And
of course, if anyone is interesting in *doing* the work, that's great
too :) I will be happy to offer advice and help test.

In the absence of a new go-build-system, it's hard to decide what to do
here.