September 1, 2021 8:35 PM, "Liliana Marie Prikler" <leo.prik...@student.tugraz.at> wrote
> Making our rando commit git versions look like such other distro > versions does come at a disadvantage though, particularly when we look > at it through the lense of someone not used to Guix' versioning scheme. > Instead of telling us "yeah, this is the Nth time we picked a rando > commit since the last release and this time it's de4db3ef", users > coming from such distros would assume "oh well, this is still good ol' > 1.0 with some more patches applied". So while the commit itself does > not give us any particularly useful information (unless you're that > person who uses this part of the version string to look the commit up > on hubbucket), especially not when thinking in the context of > versioning scheme, it does provide the existential information of "hold > on, this is not a release commit, it's something else" and might thus > direct users to be a little more attentive when they'd otherwise go > "yep, upstream considers this solid and Guix considers it even more > solid, so it's the solidest". Note, that this can be overcome both by > teaching/learning about it and by using a special sigil as mentioned > above. Perhaps a function revealing metadata based upon the version string would allow more people get an overview without visiting hubbucket^1? Would that be any weirder and awkward for workflows than the command `guix download'? => https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-download.html Even better, highlighting the part of the string and launching an appropriate context in Emacs-Hyperbole > My personal answer to this might be a disappointing one, as in that > case I believe we wouldn't even need procedures like git-version to > form them, but could instead use <upstream-version>-<guix-revision> as > a mere convention like many more popular distros already do. If the > dash is overused for that, we could also use a different symbol, though > perhaps there's not that many on a typical US keyboard to reserve one > as a revision delimiter. # Apologies for being off topic The inclusion of that character '£' on keyboards bothers me - Ive never seen anybody use it (though maybe I have some fuzzy memory with regards to the Commodore 64). If it unfortunately is on an international band of keyboard classes consider it as a delimiter. Otherwise Im ripping out that button and never interfacing the number 3 again. ^1 Is that pronounced bouquet? => https://keepingupappearances.fandom.com/wiki/Hyacinth_Bucket ==================== Jonathan McHugh indieterminacy@libre.brussels > Am Mittwoch, den 01.09.2021, 18:39 +0200 schrieb Maxime Devos: > >> Liliana Marie Prikler schreef op wo 01-09-2021 om 15:33 [+0200]: >> Hi >> >> Am Dienstag, den 31.08.2021, 23:20 +0200 schrieb Maxime Devos: >>> Sarah Morgensen schreef op di 31-08-2021 om 12:57 [-0700]: >>>> Hello Guix, >>>> >>>> Currently, there are about 1500 packages defined like this: >>>> >>>> --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8- >>>> -- >>>> (define-public sbcl-feeder >>>> (let ((commit "b05f517d7729564575cc809e086c262646a94d34") >>>> (revision "1")) >>>> (package >>>> [...]))) >>>> --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8- >>>> -- >>>> >>>> I feel like there are some issues with this idiom (in no >>>> particular >>>> order): >>>> >>>> 1. When converting between this idiom and regularly versioned >>>> packages, the git diff shows the whole package changing because >>>> of >>>> the indentation change. >> If you are worried about that in a frequently changing package, you >> could set both to *unspecified* or #f instead, which would cause >> any >> reference to them in a string manipulation context to fail. I >> don't >> think that such transitions are too frequent, though, as the point >> is >> rather to discourage them where not absolutely necessary and to use >> upstream releases instead. >> >>>> 2. We cannot get at the source location for the definition of >>>> 'commit' or 'revision'. This would be useful for updating >>>> these >>>> packages with `guix refresh -u`. There is a proposed patch [0] >>>> to >>>> work around this, but it *is* a workaround. >> Other versioning idioms would also be workarounds, wouldn't they? >> >>>> 3. Packages inheriting from it lose the definitions. For >>>> actual >>>> fields, we have e.g. `(package-version this-package)`, but we >>>> have >>>> no equivalent for these. >> What purpose would extracting those serve however? >> >> Not losing the revision is useful for things like >> <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/50072>, to be able to determine the old >> revision. (That's not about inheriting packages though.) > > Isn't that addressed by addressing the second point, though? Like, if > you know the source location of the revision, you can read it back to > get the value itself (or possibly even access it as-is), no? > >> [...] >>> To be used like: >>> >>> (define-public sbcl-feeder >>> (name "sbcl-feeder") >>> (version (extended-version >>> (base "1.0.0") >>> (revision 1) >>> (commit >>> "b05f517d7729564575cc809e086c262646a94d34"))) >>> (source >>> (origin >>> (method git-fetch) >>> (uri (git-reference ...) >>> (url ...) >>> ;; git-reference needs to be extended to retrieve the >>> commit from the version >>> (version version))) >>> (file-name (git-file-name "feeder" version)) >>> (sha256 ...))) >>> [...]) >>> >>> That should address 1,2,3,4 and 5. >>> >>> One problem with this approach is that most users of 'package- >>> version' expect it to return a string. Maybe adding a keyword >>> argument '#:full-version? #t/#f' defaulting to #f would work? >> I think the bigger problem here is that you're moving bits meant >> for >> the origin into the version only to be able to point to the version >> from the origin. Even accepting that you could use "commit" or a >> separate field to encode SVN/CVS revision numbers instead of >> hashes, >> everything beyond the revision number is basically pointless from a >> versioning scheme POV and only really useful to fetch the source >> code. >> As Xinglu Chen points out, a commit hash encodes remarkably little >> on its own. >> >> The commit is largely useless, ok. If the (first few characters of) >> the git commit/svn revision are removed from the version strings, it >> can be removed from the proposed extended-version. >> >> Otherwise, it would seem you wouldn't mind extended-version if it >> only had the 'base version' and 'revision' field (in the guix sense, >> not the SVN sense of revision), or am I misunderstanding here? > > That was not my suggestion, but let's entertain the idea, shall we? In > that case, we would discard the commit part from the version field, > which might not be everyone's tea, but I'm more or less indifferent as > to whether to include the hash there or not – after all, even if it was > lacking, we'd quickly get it through inspecting the package > description. If we simply didn't capture the hash at all except inside > the commit field of the origin, we would gain 1, 4 and 5 so the > question is whether we should have an extended version so as to update > the revision more easily... > > My personal answer to this might be a disappointing one, as in that > case I believe we wouldn't even need procedures like git-version to > form them, but could instead use <upstream-version>-<guix-revision> as > a mere convention like many more popular distros already do. If the > dash is overused for that, we could also use a different symbol, though > perhaps there's not that many on a typical US keyboard to reserve one > as a revision delimiter. > > Making our rando commit git versions look like such other distro > versions does come at a disadvantage though, particularly when we look > at it through the lense of someone not used to Guix' versioning scheme. > Instead of telling us "yeah, this is the Nth time we picked a rando > commit since the last release and this time it's de4db3ef", users > coming from such distros would assume "oh well, this is still good ol' > 1.0 with some more patches applied". So while the commit itself does > not give us any particularly useful information (unless you're that > person who uses this part of the version string to look the commit up > on hubbucket), especially not when thinking in the context of > versioning scheme, it does provide the existential information of "hold > on, this is not a release commit, it's something else" and might thus > direct users to be a little more attentive when they'd otherwise go > "yep, upstream considers this solid and Guix considers it even more > solid, so it's the solidest". Note, that this can be overcome both by > teaching/learning about it and by using a special sigil as mentioned > above. > > All in all, I don't think putting too much "opinion" in the version > field by storing it as a record is a good idea. It's fine if it's just > a string that can be parsed/version-compared. We could also make it a > list like Emacs does and like we use internally, though I'm not too > certain of what the benefit of that would be at the cost of breaking > pretty much everything (and probably putting in some opinions as to > what is to be delimited by dots and what by dashes). > > Regards