Subject: Re: [bug#60014] [PATCH] activation: make install-special-file match against pairs as well.

From: mirai <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2022 22:25:05 +0000

On 2022-12-12 20:52, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote:
> Josselin Poiret via Guix-patches via 写道：
>> I personally would prefer keeping the special file interface as-is, and
>> not mix two different kinds of entries: lists with 2 elements, and
>> pairs.  That would avoid having to manage even more edge-cases down the
>> line if some more processing is needed.
> 
> I agree with this reasoning, and would go as far as to say that if this fixes anything, that thing should probably be fixed instead…?
> 
> ‘Takes a list of As, but as a special case, a single A’ is confusing and makes it that much harder for newcomers to move beyond cargo-culting magical snippets.

That's not what's happening here, right now what guix does is: take a list of tuples, where tuples are 2-element lists of path + file-like.
This patch does: take a list of tuples, where tuples are pairs of path + file-like (and as a bonus,
preserve existing configurations by allowing the pairs to be lists as well).