Re: Can we find a better idiom for unversioned packages?

[Sarah Morgensen]

Hi Maxime,

Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be> writes:

>> > 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?
>
> Indeed!  The patch [0] addresses the second point.  With that patch,
> the proposed <extension-version> isn't required.  But also: some people
> (at least Sarah?) consider [0] a work-around, and if guix used something
> like <extended-version>, [0] wouldn't be necessary.
>
> It doesn't really matter to me what we'll end up using in guix
> in the long term, though in the short term, I would like something
> like [0] to be merged, as it is used by the (not-yet submitted, needs some
> cleanup, testing & rebasing) minetest updater, and it makes
> <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/50072> work in more cases.
>
> [0]: <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/50072>

Despite starting this thread, I do agree that your patch would be
helpful, at least in the short term, since I'd like to get git updating
working sooner rather than later :)

(There are a couple other usages of 'let' forms in packages, and your
patch could either help or hinder getting source locations for those,
depending on what semantics we want.  Very much an edge case, though.)

--
Sarah