Ludovic Courtès (2014-07-21 20:04 +0400) wrote: > Alex Kost <alez...@gmail.com> skribis: > >> I think current situation is very confusing to users. A user can't even >> install any package. What if he wants to install “guile” from >> “base.scm”? > > It’s possible, using ‘guix package -e’ (info "(guix) Invoking guix > package"). > > I think guix.el should be able to distinguish packages internally, so > that when I choose, say, a specific “guile-2.0.11”, that’s really the > one that gets installed (maybe it already does, I haven’t checked.)
No it doesn't and I don't see how it can be done. If it were Guile Emacs, it would be possible to distinguish packages internally, but all I have now is name+version which is not unique. Or maybe... >> I strongly believe this is a problem. You can see the packages that you >> can't install or even worse “guix package --list-installed” may tell you >> that you have several “foo-1.0:out” installed. Actually when I saw the >> packages with the same name/version the first time, I thought it's a >> bug. > > I would say it’s a problem of the distro–i.e., the (gnu packages ...) > modules–if several same-named packages are exposed to the user. We’ve > discussed several times the problem of having duplicates between > base.scm and other modules, but I haven’t come to a satisfying solution. > > So I agree, these specific cases must be addressed somehow. > > However, it’s a fundamental feature of the package manager that packages > (really: package records) can be freely created, and that the ‘name’ > field is just a hint. Duplicates should remain rare in practice, but > the UI must be prepared to deal with them IMO. > > WDYT? ... or maybe this: to fill some hash table or vhash or whatever with all available packages after a repl is started, and use this storage with unique keys to search/get packages instead of the ‘fold-packages’. This will allow to get and thus to install a particular package by its key. I didn't think much about it, but right now this is the only workaround I can imagine. What do you think?
