Hi, On sam., 22 oct. 2022 at 22:58, Felix Lechner via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org> wrote:
> While I am relatively new to functional package management, I find it > inconsistent that inputs in Guix are provided by variables. What do you mean by « variables »? > I believe the inputs should be provided by functions that deliver the > most suitable version of a package. For most packages, that is the > most recent version unless pinned. What do you mean by « inputs »? Currently, the “new” style refers to symbol as inputs which points to other package definitions. A package definition somehow defines a function to build a package. At this level, it is hard to have a precise meaning of « suitable version of a package», IMHO. At the CLI level, packages are referred by their name field and the most recent version is used by default; unless a specific version as ’@1.2.3’ is appended to the name. > A package definition would be the list of available versions rather > than just one version. What do you build? Do you build the matrix of all the combinations? The hard task of a package manager is to provide a set of packages at their appropriated versions that works well all together. Aside some specific cases where the compatibility across version is guarantee, I miss how a mutli-version definition could work in practise. Package transformation is somehow a way to implement package definition for several versions. It allows to rewrite the function definition (package) but in the same time to keep under control the combinations. Cheers, simon
