Hello all, Continuing my Sunday catch-up, I'd like to kick the tires on this.
Tarballs seem to have the following: + Faster to build + Faster first time download - Larger downloads for smaller changes - Autotools are pre-built, negating bootstrapping - SWH not yet supported (https://forge.softwareheritage.org/T1352) + Fewer package dependencies\ + Can use alternative source versions via `--with-source` -- more likely for each to work, but fewer options Git seems to have the following: - Slower to build - Slower first time download + Smaller incremental downloads + More complete bootstrapping + SWH support is working - Adds extra dependency on git + Easy use of alternative commits via `--with-commit` Practically, these options are highly similar, with git having some edge when it comes to bootstrapping the software more completely, and avoiding using as many non-source executable things. But that is extendable to tarballs as well. What it comes down for me is that git offers a more coherent history of a piece of software all in one location. Tarballs are snapshots in a software's history, and I'd prefer to just have the entire history already in one managed and organized location. That is one things tarballs can't practically accomplish. I am also for having a de-factco, soft suggestion that packages use. I think git-fetch is ever so slightly the better option, and so should be a "default" recommendation over url-fetch. That being said, I am more in favor of having a default than what that default is. On Thu, May 14, 2020 at 12:16 PM Jack Hill <jackh...@jackhill.us> wrote: > > On Wed, 13 May 2020, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote: > > >> --with-commit > > > > Yes, this is niice. ♥ > > > > For the sake of argument¹, though, so is --with-source=<actually released > > and > > supported upstream tarball dot tar>. > > > > Somehow erasing that hard distinction is the real winning move. > > > > Kind regards, > > > > T G-R > > > > [1]: Obligatory <https://xkcd.com/1432>. > > Heh, I'll take the bait. I also really appreciate how easy we make it for > people to exercise their software freedom and run modified software. How > best to make that possible and balance it with other usability constraints > (e.g. mirror:// urls should be more robust) may vary by package, so I > agree with Leo that some discretion is needed. However, that's not to say > that I wouldn't appreciate some guidance as to our default preference when > there is no package-specific reason to prefer one way over the other. > > It seems a bigger problem is when the build method for the git repository > and release tarball are different. In many packages this is because of the > pre-generated autotools build system in the release tarballs. Should we > bootstrap the autotools build system even when building from a release > tarball? As I understand it, autotools has historically been treated this > way in part to allow building on systems without the right version of > autotools, but is that really a problem in Guix? Why should it be treated > differently than other pre-generated artifacts which we rebuild? > > Another improvement we could make here is improving the message about > Software Heritage in guix lint. Most of the other messages it emits are > things that the author of a package should consider improving. If the > Software Heritage message is less actionable, let's make that clearer so > that people don't think there is a problem with their package definition. > > Best, > Jack
