Ricardo Wurmus (2016-10-15 00:05 +0200) wrote: > Hi Guix, > > it happened a couple of times already that a “substitute*” expression > silently failed and I only found out about it when investigating the > remains of a failing build (“guix build -K”). This can easily happen > when a package is updated and substitutions “anchors” no longer exist in > the updated source code. > > Would it be desirable to change “substitute*” (or replace it) such that > it throws an error or returns a value if substitution failed? This > might be helpful for the more complex packages with many substitutions. > If we make it return a value (#f for error) it would also make our build > phases a little prettier, I think. (Now we forcefully return #t in any > case and that seems wrong.)
This was also discussed a bit around here: <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2016-09/msg01844.html>. As I mentioned in that message, I'm for returning #t/#f for succeeded/failed substitution. -- Alex
