Subject: [bug#70858] [PATCH v5 python-team 00/48] Removing unwanted native-inputs.

From: Nicolas Graves <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2025 11:23:01 +0200

On 2025-04-09 10:46, Andreas Enge wrote:

> Hello Nicolas and the Python team,
>
> is this being handled on the current python-team branch?
> Or should it get some special treatment?

We dropped this patch series for this iteration of the python-team
branch.

I think I slightly prefer a GCD to add a development-inputs
field to the <package> record or in its properties, but I haven't
implemented or tested a viable solution yet.  IMO, we should avoid
actually having evaluated packages there, so either by delaying the
field and only evaluating it in a `guix shell -D` context, or using
string specifications instead of packages.  I prefer this solution
because at least the node-build-system requires a similar way to filter
out unwanted inputs to become usable. The solution to put it in the
build-system itself is fragile (adding a new unwanted input leads to a
world rebuild), so to me it seems like declaring those inputs as
package-specific development-only is a smart way to filter them out of
our native-inputs in a more robust way.  And it's still useful
information for `guix lint`, `guix import` and  `guix shell -D` where we
might want to handle them and where a string specification is enough!

Ricardo preferred to apply this, but we agreed for at least waiting for
the next iteration.

The patch series is not lost, this work will eventually be useful, be it
applied or through building up a related GCD.

-- 
Best regards,
Nicolas Graves