Subject: Re: bug#47027: Disarchive package

From: Timothy Sample <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2021 22:06:37 -0500

Hi,

Thanks Leo for the review!  (And to Ludo and Tobias for follow ups.)

Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> writes:

> Leo Prikler <[email-masked]> skribis:
>
>> I've checked and the package seems to build fine with Guile 3.0.2.  I
>> think the bytecode mismatch happens, because Guix compiles stuff with
>> 3.0.2 by default, but users have 3.0.5 in their system, which is not
>> bytecode-compatible.  (As an exception, Guix itself seems to be
>> compiled with Guile 3.0.5 for performance reasons).
>>
>> I think it would be fine to add with Guile 3.0.2, perhaps adding a note
>> that Guile 3.0.5 will effectively be required to use Guix interop?  If
>> not, could you provide a script, that breaks in a way other than
>> recompiling the mismatching code?
>
> I tend to agree here: I don’t think ‘guile-3.0-latest’ is needed in this
> case.  The only case where you need it is if it depends on a library,
> such as Guix, that is itself built with ‘guile-3.0-latest’.

Well, now I’m second guessing myself.  :)

It is just the auto compilation notes and warnings that I’m worried
about.  The module closure of “swh.scm” works fine on Guile 3.0.2.

Eventually, the daemon will invoke Disarchive via “builtin:download” and
“perform-download.scm”.  I intend to use the Scheme interface there,
which means Disarchive will be runing on Guile 3.0.5.  For that, it
would be preferable to have a Guile 3.0.5 version of Disarchive, right?

On the other hand, when using Disarchive to extract metadata (e.g., with
Cuirass), the SWH code is not needed at all.

I will resurrect my patch for calling Disarchive from Guix, and come
back to this when I know exactly what kind of package I need for that to
work smoothly.

>> As far as the location is concerned, I personally do not like adding
>> too many single-package files.  Would it make sense to add this to
>> compression.scm (like gzip) or backup.scm (like libarchive)?
>
> Maybe there’ll be other packages eventually in archival.scm, like the
> SWH Python code?  It’s fine with me, but I don’t have a strong opinion.

I don’t feel strongly about it either.  There’s other software besides
Disarchive and SWH that could be called “archival”, and I think it’s
more accurate than the other options.

-- Tim