bug#47260: Package GNU MediaGoblin as a Guix service

[Christopher Lemmer Webber]

Ben Sturmfels via Bug reports for GNU Guix writes:

> On Fri, 19 Mar 2021, jgart wrote:
>
>> This sounds like a great project. I would love MediaGoblin to be in Guix 
>> also.
>>
>>> 6. Rewrite MediaGoblin's JavaScript code not to use jQuery. Maybe
>>> improve the no-bundled-JavaScript video/audio playing experience.
>>
>> What are your thoughts on rewriting the jquery? 
>>
>> Should MediaGoblin be using vanilla javascript instead?
>>
>> Some other possibilities could be purescript (https://www.purescript.org) or
>> mint (http://mint-lang.com), although mint and crystal are not in guix yet 
>> and
>> mint uses preact (http://preactjs.com) as its' runtime since 0.8.0
>> (https://www.mint-lang.com/blog/mint-0.8.0).
>
> Many of the functions we used to use jQuery for are now built into most
> browsers from the last 10 years.
>
> By far the most common are element selectors like:
>
>   var panel = $('#header-panel')
>   var arrow = $('.arrow')
>
> which we just change to:
>
>   var panel = document.querySelector('#header-panel')
>   var arrow = document.querySelector('.arrow')
>
> This is all vanilla JavaScript in individual files imported via <script>
> without any sort of compilation process. This seems to be the simplest
> path to get into distributions like Guix and Debian. The main problem
> with purescript and others is that they require more dependencies, build
> steps and tooling and are known by less people.
>
> We have a few dependencies which will be harder to deal with such as the
> video, audio and 3D model viewers. In the first instance, I think the
> answer will be to do without this JavaScript entirely. That should be
> feasible for video and audio given modern browser support. Perhaps we
> don't ship 3D model support out of the box in distros for now.
>
> Regards,
> Ben

The 3d model support isn't MediaGoblin's most heavily used plugin.  Not
shipping support for that would be fine, I'd think.

 - Chris