Subject: [bug#60358] Providing gnulib

From: Vivien Kraus <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2022 18:33:15 +0100

Hello guix,

I’m trying to provide gnulib for guix. However, when I try to use a
git-checkout as the source, to always have the latest commit, then guix
fails with: 

updating checkout of 'https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/gnulib.git'...
guix build: error: Git failure while fetching
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/gnulib.git: reference
'refs/remotes/origin/HEAD' not found

I don’t fully understand what happens. Do you have an idea?

Also, when using gnulib, the whole point is to have GNULIB_SRCDIR point
to a directory where the gnulib files are, so that bootstrap srcipts
can use that instead of a git submodule (which is not possible with
guix). I tried to set it as a search-path-specification, which seems to
work, but I’m not sure that it is the correct approach.

What do you think?

Best regards,

Vivien