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Subject: |
documentation: Explanation of propagated-inputs unclear |
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Date: |
Sun, 19 Mar 2017 08:03:32 +0100 |
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User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Icedove/45.8.0 |
Hello,
I presume the difference between a package’s `inputs` and
`propagated-inputs` in Guix packages is that propagated inputs get
installed to a Guix profile whenever the package is installed while
inputs are dependencies that remain in the Store. I presume libraries
the packaged program is linked to do not need to go to
`propagated-inputs` because the program is linked to the files in the Store.
For more context, I am attempting to package the GNOME Evolution mail
client which looks for evolution-data-server’s
share/dbus-1/services/org.gnome.evolution.dataserver.Sources.service
at run time and thus should use it as a propagated input (I believe).
I am however confused by `info guix` where I find explanations like
“Lastly, ‘propagated-inputs’ is similar to ‘inputs’, but the
specified packages will be automatically installed alongside
the package they belong to (*note ‘guix package’:
package-cmd-propagated-inputs, for information on how ‘guix
package’ deals with propagated inputs.)”
and
“Sometimes packages have “propagated inputs”: these are dependencies
that automatically get installed along with the required package
(*note ‘propagated-inputs’ in ‘package’ objects:
package-propagated-inputs, for information about propagated inputs
in package definitions).“
I suggest mentioning more explicitly
1) that `propagated-inputs` are automatically installed *to the Guix
profile* and not just the Store like regular inputs and
2) that C/C++ libraries do not need to be propagated because they can
just as well be loaded from the Store *unless* their header files are
included by header files of another input package (?) and
3) more examples like the above example for GNOME Evolution (which
however I have yet to finish packaging and submit as a patch; maybe
dconf is a better example – I presume it is also needed at run time and
not just).
This would have made the purpose of `propagated-inputs` easier to
understand.
Regards,
Florian
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