Dear, On Sat, 9 May 2020 at 22:19, Josh Marshall <joshua.r.marshall.1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> [...] naming conventions between the source project, [...] , and guix itself > have some drift. Some packages already track upstream name: see the field '(proprieties (upstream-name . "foo"))', e.g., the package "r-flowsom", > The approach which I think makes the most sense is to add an optional but > encouraged field in package definitions which takes a list of alternative > package names. When using `guix search` this field could also be evaluated, > and when `guix package -i` is invoked and the target does not exist, these > aliases could be searched through for similar names to the non-existing > target and suggest the actual package they might have intended. Well, the 'proprieties' field is not used by 'package->recutils' which is the function used by "guix show" (and "guix search"). I do not have an option if an extra field "upstream-name" should be added or not. However, from my point of view, "Explicit is better than implicit." as said any good Zen. ;-) So, I appears to me a bad idea to implicitly install 'bar' when I type "guix package -i foo" because 'bar' is an alternative name I am not aware of. IMHO, the fix is to improve the synposis and the description to be able to reach the expected package. If the description is well-written, then "guix search bar" should return the package "foo". Well, do you have specific example in mind? All the best, simon
