Subject: Re: [bug#65866] Bootstrapping without the daemon and all that

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2023 12:54:54 +0200

Hi,

Simon Tournier <[email-masked]> skribis:

> To make it explicit: is this series worth the Guile-GnuTLS/Git
> circular dependency corner case?  Maybe it is already all clear for
> you, and your answer is a big YES. :-)  And perhaps it is the only
> answer. :-)  But it does not mean the answer is fully clear for
> everybody, at least it is not necessary straightforward for me.
> Somehow, do we have a consensus about the way that this series is
> worth the Guile-GnuTLS/Git circular dependency corner case?  And a
> consensus about the way that this series is The Right Thing for that
> circular dependency?

One thing I probably didn’t explain clearly is that yes, the circular
dependency issue is one we have to solve.  For years, I hope we could
avoid it but experience has shown that no, it’s a problem we did have to
address.

One example is Guile-GnuTLS being built from a Git checkout.  Another
one is Hurd packages in commencement.scm built from a Git checkout.  We
had to go to great lengths to avoid ‘git-fetch’:

  https://issues.guix.gnu.org/64708#6

More and more software is built from Git checkouts rather than tarballs.
In the long run, we won’t be able to guarantee that none of the
dependencies of ‘git-minimal’ takes its source via ‘git-fetch’.

This is especially true if we want to move away from Autotools-generated
tarballs and instead run ‘autoreconf’ ourselves on pristine source.

Ludo’.