Re: `guix package -u` upgrades packages to themselves

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Chris,

> Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> That’s because the package version itself is insufficient.  In Guix
>> we’re dealing with package “variants”.
>
> Where is the concept of a package "variant" defined?  I briefly grepped
> in the source but only found some ad-hoc stuff for Python and OCaml,
> which actually do some kind of stuff with the package-properties.

What I meant is that the version string alone is insufficient.  You can
have multiple variants of a package with the same nominal version, but
the differences are in the closure of the package.  When Guix is
upgraded in between two invocations of “guix package -u” seeing the same
“version” of a package to be upgraded to is a common occurrence.

> How can the inputs have changed if Pierre is just running "guix package
> -u" repeatedly?

That bit of information was not available to me when I composed my
initial response.  If Guix is not changed in between then this behaviour
seems to be a bug.

--
Ricardo