GNU bug report logs - #64509
Guile packages should install versioned aliases for binaries (guile-X.Y, guild-X.Y, etc.)

Previous Next

Full log

View this message in rfc822 format

From: "Zack Weinberg" <zack <at> owlfolio.org>
To: "Janneke Nieuwenhuizen" <janneke <at> gnu.org>, Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 64509 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#64509: Guile packages should install versioned aliases for binaries (guile-X.Y, guild-X.Y, etc.)
Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 15:59:21 -0400

On Mon, Aug 21, 2023, at 3:37 AM, Janneke Nieuwenhuizen wrote:

> It's terrible that guile.m4 has this feature of preferring numbered
> binaries (even if they're later in PATH, and even if that binary
> doesn't match GUILE_LOAD_*PATHs)

I can see why it does this -- it wants to find the newest available
Guile and it wants to be sure that all the binaries it uses are a
matched set. The original design assumption was probably that, if you're
using numbered binaries, then the un-suffixed "guile" can't be relied on
to be the newest available.  (Not as strange as it might sound; I have a
login on a machine where un-suffixed "perl" still runs Perl 5.005_02,
because the admins want to make absolutely sure that they never break
any user's #! scripts.)

It would probably be a good idea for guile.m4 to be altered to take the
un-suffixed binaries if that's the only way it can get a full set, but
given how long it takes for Autoconf macro changes to propagate to the
world, I think Guix should provide the numbered binaries regardless.

> and that Guix doesn't provide them. What about a wrapper package that
> provides these?

Why bother with a wrapper?  It should be _easier_ to have the main guile
package supply the numbered binaries.

>> I think the solution is to use ‘guix shell -D guix -CP'
...
> Hmm, yeah -- that sounds like the proper way of doing things
...

Not an option for me, for reasons explained in my earlier reply to
Ludovic.

zw

Previous Next

GNU bug tracking system
Copyright (C) 1999 Darren O. Benham, 1997,2003 nCipher Corporation Ltd, 1994-97 Ian Jackson.