Subject: Re: [bug#67660] [PATCH] gnu: texlive-xiften: Readd need input propagation

From: Nicolas Goaziou <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2023 22:39:02 +0100

Hello,

Isaac van Bakel <[email-masked]> writes:

>  * gnu/packages/tex.scm (texlive-xfithen)[propagated-inputs]:
>    Readd propagation of `texlive-ifmtarg` to fix usage of package.
>
> Change-Id: I9e5e3cfa0fad3dc9fd3b4950eedf7443b254d2f1
> ---
> This was removed as a "spurious" propagated input by the
> texlive-team-next changes, but in my usage it was not spurious and the
> package propagation is needed to use `xifthen` correctly.
>
>  gnu/packages/tex.scm | 1 +
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
>
> diff --git a/gnu/packages/tex.scm b/gnu/packages/tex.scm
> index 0d76710daa..934cdb2a80 100644
> --- a/gnu/packages/tex.scm
> +++ b/gnu/packages/tex.scm
> @@ -70883,6 +70883,7 @@ (define-public texlive-xifthen
>                "0b33mlmnxsj5mi06v2w2zgamk51mgv1lxdr1cax8nkpn9g7n9axw")))
>      (outputs '("out" "doc"))
>      (build-system texlive-build-system)
> +    (propagated-inputs (list texlive-ifmtarg))

This is a limitation in TeX Live, not Guix's, package definitions. The
dependency is not reported in their "texlive.tlpdb" file.

Note there are hundreds of such issues. We cannot realistically fix them
manually ; for example this change would need to be tested every time
Guix TeX packages are updated.

I suggest to use collections of packages to avoid messing too much with
individual dependencies, and possibly report those missing dependencies
to the TeX Live project.

Regards,
-- 
Nicolas Goaziou