Subject: [bug#74878] [PATCH 0/2] Improve Guix Subsitute script usage.

From: Richard Sent <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2024 19:23:35 -0500

Hi all,

A common question I hear is "why is guix updating substitutes so many
times". My thinking is by adding the number of substitutes being updated to
guix/scripts/substitute.scm, it might be a bit clearer that something
different is happening every time.

(This was a very "fun" adventure. Originally I used ~:*~p to refer to the
previous argument, but that emits a warning in Guile because
format-string-argument-count doesn't seem to handle ~:*. Fortunately a commit
[1] by Ludo in 2014 showed me I could use ~:p instead.)

I also tweaked the help output since I found it a bit unclear. I know it's an
internal tool, but unless I'm missing something (I very may be) the previous
help output seemed almost misleading.

Note that if anyone tests this you won't see any changes in regular guix CLI
usage unless/until the guix package proper is updated. Instead, you can use
commands like:

echo "have /gnu/store/0zahq56kff8cfrq9xhkq5wi2zdkysj6b-emacs-29.1" | guix substitute --query

[1]: 8ac39b38

Richard Sent (2):
  scripts: substitute: Report the number of substitutes being updated.
  scripts: substitute: Improve the help output.

 guix/scripts/substitute.scm | 15 +++++++++------
 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

base-commit: 64ac17035d66d98d3081bc7fc558c33e1be8e4f4
-- 
2.46.0