John Kehayias <john.kehay...@protonmail.com> writes: > Hello, > > On Sun, Oct 08, 2023 at 10:34 AM, Ekaitz Zarraga wrote: > >> Hi >> >> I want to forward this message to guix-devel because it is a clear >> case of some (actually good) technical decision affecting users in >> unexpected ways. >> >> Now, after the change, a user might run `guix search avr-toolchain` >> and find nothing. Same for ARM. >> > > In this case would it have helped to deprecate the package? Or can we > (ab)use this as a way to notify a user that either something has > changed (use a procedure now) or that a package you might expect at > this name is available some other way? > >> This is a shame, because we have toolchains for those architectures >> but converting them to a function that returns the package leave many >> users that are not used to read guix's code thinking those packages >> are gone. >> >> Maybe we should create some kind of fake packages that show up in >> `guix show` and `guix search` that have a short tutorial on how to use >> packages that come from a function like these. >> This way providing the same interface for every package regardless >> where they are coming from. >> > > At the very least this should be documented, perhaps adding to > information about the kernel in the manual and generally > customizing/building your own. > > I like the idea in general of making sure people can find things and > if they are not where you'd expect not having a hard time to find > them. Some tips in a package description about how to use or where to > look in the manual for information would be good, but I don't think > we'd want to get too verbose here, adding another maintenance point > that should be proper documentation (or cookbook). > > As an example, we don't need to always say how to add udev rules from > a package, but letting users know (if it is not obvious from the name) > that rules are included and should be added to a system configuration > for something to work (pointing to the manual about udev service) I > think can be helpful. I don't know though, I guess the package's > documentation itself needs to tell a user how to use it, and then one > looks in the Guix manual how to add udev rules. > > Anyway, perhaps I run on a tangent here. > > John > >> I leave it as food for thought. >> >> Thanks, >> >> Ekaitz >> >>
Adding my two cents here as a user. It would be great to have some sort of documentation about this. Just a tiny snippet on how to use them will be sufficient. And a guix pull --news that notified you about the packages changed to procedures. It was not obvious to me when avr-toolchain disappeared how to proceed. I had to look in the commit log to figure out what happened to it (the issue tracker would probably also have worked). Even then it wasn't super obvious how I would use them as my mind was fixed on the `guix shell PACKAGE0 PACKAGE1 …` workflow. I never really use manifests as I have guix home to handle all my packages, and guix.scm for package development. -- s/Fred[re]+i[ck]+/Fredrik/g
