Subject: bug#61684: can't compose 'with-patch' with 'with-source'

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2023 15:09:23 +0100

Hi!

Simon Tournier <[email-masked]> skribis:

>>>From my point of view (and what I tried stopping in the middle :-)) is
> to report if the transformation makes sense or not.  For instance,

You stated that multiple times and there’s general consensus that
reporting the issue would be great.

However, as I explained before, there’s no clear way to do that for two
reasons:

  1. Transformations apply to bags, not packages, so we cannot tell
     whether a transformation has an effect until after the transformed
     package has been lowered.  Even then, it’s tricky.

  2. In this case, this has to do with the semantics of transformations
     themselves: by definition, ‘with-source’ dismisses patches.

[...]

> Well, I am not convinced that enforce the ordering is a good thing
> because as Ludo said, some HPC user exploits this control of ordering to
> generate complex transformations.

My point is that there are folks who have been using package
transformation options for years; any claim has to be evaluated in that
light, and any change would have to be considered very carefully.

Thanks,
Ludo’.