Subject: Re: bug#57858: [PATCH] gnu: git-annex: Promote git to propagated input

From: Konrad Hinsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2022 12:11:26 +0200

zimoun <[email-masked]> writes:

> About (2), what do you mean Konrad?  Is ’git-annex’ not working as
> expected?  Well, ’git annex’ is a shorthand for ’git-annex’ and I
> thought this ’git-annex’ is self-contained; for which operations
> ’git-annex’ depends on the ’git’ binaires?

Maxime quoted a simple command line example. git-annex requires git for
pretty much everything it does.

But that's not the question here. As Maxime said, git could just be a
standard (non-propagated) input with a small patch to git-annex. That
makes it work to a large degree (requiring you to replace "git annex" by
"git-annex" in all command lines), but it occasionally failed for me and
I didn't invest much effort to explore why, given that I consider it
pointless to try to use git-annex without git.

But you are right in pointing out that this is an instance of a
situation for which Guix should have a general policy. git-lfs is
probably in exactly the same situation. Not emacs-magit though: it works
perfectly fine without exposing git in the same profile. Being a git
plugin is not the same as being a git wrapper.

Cheers,
  Konrad