Re: guile-hall issues converting my project to a hall project

[Zelphir Kaltstahl]

Hi Alex!

I am willing to test/try some more.

When you say "since commit xyz", do you mean commit of guile-hall
itself, or a commit of Guix, where an updated version of guile-hall is
available?

How would I test the master branch version? I would guess install it in
a guix environment and then use that environment to try and convert a
project.

What would you suggest testing?

It was quite OK to edit hall.scm in an editor. Perhaps, if a project is
significantly bigger than my project, it would become cumbersome, but
for me personally it is fine, now that I know what goes in there and how
it needs to look.

I have not yet begun writing a guide for converting a project. Hopefully
I'll be able to do so soon.

Best regards,
Zelphir

On 2/17/21 10:17 PM, Alex Sassmannshausen wrote:
> Hi Zelphir and Tim,
>
> I am the author of guile hall — apologies for only now getting into this
> thread. I'm afraid I have been somewhat distracted with other things.
>
> First of all I want to echo what others have said — thank you very much
> for your detailed descriptions of what exactly happened when you tried
> to migrate the project to guile hall.
>
> The aim of the project is to massively reduce the barrier of entry to
> creating new, portable, high quality guile projects — and to contribute
> them to Guix. Your descriptions suggest it's not there yet!
>
> In any case, some comments inline:
>
> Zelphir Kaltstahl <zelphirkaltstahl@posteo.de> writes:
>
>> Hello Tim!
>>
>> Thank you, it works now!
>>
>> Removing the duplicate entry of `fslib` in hall.scm fixed it.
> Fwiw, since commit ac76541a this issue can be automatically resolved by
> running scan once more: it should remove duplicate entries in hall.scm.
>
>> Regarding the license: OK, I have no problem moving my license to
>> `COPYING`. However, I still think, that it should not put GPL there,
>> when I specified AGPL in `hall.scm`. This looks like a hardcoded
>> fallback, which does not take the license specification into account.
>> Something like: "If there is no `COPYING` file just put GPL into a file
>> `COPYING`." instead of "If there is no `COPYING` file just put
>> <user-specified-license-in-hall.scm> into a file `COPYING`.". I could be
>> wrong though, as I do not know anything about guile-hall's internals.
> This is odd — Hall should respect your license choice. It should, for
> (A)GPL licenses automatically download those from the internet and
> install them in COPYING. There was an issue with those licenses hiding
> behind a 302 status code, which resulted in fallback text being loaded
> in COPYING. But even that fallback text should respect your license.
>
> I just tried changing my license to AGPLv3+ in one of my projects,
> running hall from Master (the most recent commit fixes the 302 license
> issue), and it's fetching the license correctly.
>
> I'd be interested in seeing what your experience is if you are willing
> to try?
>
> In any case, Hall is undergoing active development, and I'm hoping to
> have a fresh release end of this month, with a whole bunch of
> improvements and bug fixes. Definitely feel free to drop issues to me
> directly by email or on gitlab (though some of the ones you raised have
> been fixed, like the unknown filetype issue).
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Alex
>
>> Follow up question would be, how to bring the package into the guix
>> repository, but I am guessing, that it will be answered at
>> https://guix.gnu.org/cookbook/en/html_node/Direct-checkout-hacking.html,
>> which I have not read yet.
>>
>> Another question is, whether I should put you into the authors file and
>> write something like "help with packaging" there. What is the common
>> practice?
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Zelphir
>>
>> On 2/16/21 5:48 PM, Tim Van den Langenbergh wrote:
>>> Err, looking at your hall.scm file, you have the fslib file added to your
>>> libraries twice.
>>>
>>> Guix environment is not needed if you have all the requirements for building
>>> the package installed locally, but if you want to distribute your package 
>>> it's
>>> good practise to ensure it builds in a clean environment (see also https://
>>> guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-environment.html for more
>>> information about Guix environments).
>>>
>>> The "COPYING" file is hardcoded as license file in Hall, to ensure 
>>> compatibility
>>> with GNU standards: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html
>>>
>>> Hope this helps,
>>>
>>> Vale
>>>
>>> -Tim
>>>
>>>
-- 
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