Hello,

going through the more minor points I would like to act upon.

Am Thu, Mar 26, 2026 at 11:02:03AM +0100 schrieb civodul:
> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
> In 006-package-deprecation.md:
> 
> diff --git a/006-package-deprecation.md b/006-package-deprecation.md
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/006-package-deprecation.md
> @@ -0,0 +186,4 @@
> +since it may lead to circular dependencies between modules and thus break
> +compilation; also deprecating a package by one with the same name leads to
> +nonsensical warning messages suggesting that a package is superseded by
> +itself.
> 
> I sketched a mechanism to handle this.
> 
> My suggestion would be to change this paragraph to suggest that the old
> variable (not the package name) will be marked as deprecated with
> define-deprecated or similar for at least X months (for renaming, the current
> policy says "one year"; for variables moved, maybe 6 months is a good middle
> ground, to leave time for people to update their code?).
> 
> There are technicalities but I think they don't have to be addressed in the
> GCD. For instance, when moving a variable outside of its module (meaning it's
> the only package in this module), define-deprecated-alias/public is enough.

Okay. I have changed the "Moving packages between modules" paragraph to
make deprecations mandatory without explaining how, as this is still a
bit mysterious to me. If this GCD is accepted, we need to translate this
into a clear recipe in the manual.

I have also changed the delay for *both* renamings and moves to 6 months;
again a uniform procedure makes things easier (no need to distinguish
between define-deprecated-package and define-deprecated-alias/public),
and half a year is quite a lot. We can expect people to look at their
Guix installation, channels and so on maybe twice a year.

> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
> In 006-package-deprecation.md:
> 
> diff --git a/006-package-deprecation.md b/006-package-deprecation.md
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/006-package-deprecation.md
> @@ -0,0 +92,4 @@
> +(non-)importance, obsolescence etc. of the package is welcome, but not
> +required. Deprecation issues can easily be
> +[consulted](https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/issues?q=&type=all&labels=445131)
> +by channel administrators.
> 
> Please keep in mind that removing a binding affects everyone, not just
> third-party channel authors: those variables may appear in OS configs, Home
> configs, manifests, and so on.
> 
> So s/channel adminstrators/interested parties such as channel maintainers/ at
> least.

Okay, done.

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> In 006-package-deprecation.md:
> 
> diff --git a/006-package-deprecation.md b/006-package-deprecation.md
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/006-package-deprecation.md
> @@ -0,0 +94,4 @@
> +[consulted](https://codeberg.org/guix/guix/issues?q=&type=all&labels=445131)
> +by channel administrators.
> +Additionally, the Codeberg team `deprecation` will be created to which
> +interested parties can subscribe (for instance, one participant per
> 
> s/can subscribe/can ask to become a member of/ ?
> 
> I'm skeptical about (1) the expected benefit of becoming a member (compared to
> monitoring the deprecation label), and (2) the organization around it (would
> everyone have to tag @guix/deprecation in addition to adding the deprecation
> label? who would maintain the team members? now we'd have a team not managed 
> by
> etc/teams.scm, unlike all the other teams? how would that affect team
> membership transparency?).
> 
> I would lean towards dropping this idea of a "deprecation" team.

This is indeed a bigger change. I had added it because I thought the
notification question was a big pain point for channel maintainers,
although I personally do not think it is askin too much to click on a
link or open a bookmark once every two weeks. If people are fine with it,
I can remove all this; we can always come up with better ways to inform
people about upcoming changes (some where discussed around this GCD).
So taking any additional notifications out from this draft.

> Instead of the proposed change, I would proposed sticking to the existing
> policy (for real this time :-)): filing individual pull requests with the
> deprecation label. I think it's more efficient, somewhat more transparent (no
> catch-all PR), and has the same effect in terms of publicity.

Okay, this seems to be okay with the people who have commented so far.

Andreas


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