(address . bug-guix@gnu.org)
5dadebde-37e5-ce5e-6107-8e45dfeefa8d@gmail.com
TL;DR The freedink package is defined in a complex way that breaks
guix's custom source build features and the GUI wrapper.
The freedink package wraps the freedink-engine and freedink-data
packages so the resulting executable bin/freedink runs the freedink
engine pointed at the output of freedink-data. The wrapped packages are
not exported from gnu/packages/games.scm. Because of these two design
choices,
-> guix build --sources=all freedink does not list the freedink-data source.
-> the only way to get the freedink-data source is to run guix build
--sources=transitive freedink. This is not ideas because it gets the
source for bash as well.
-> "guix build --with-source=freedink-data=..." has no effect on
freedink, so guix cannot be used to facilitate freedoms 1 and 3 with
freedink, unlike most other packages. To be clear, freedoms 1 (to
modify the software) and 3 (to distribute the modified software) are not
violated, but a very nice feature of guix that makes them less complex
does not work with freedink. To achieve a guix install or pack of
freedink as it is currently defined with custom sources and/or data, one
must define new freedink packages, which is more work than one or two
simple command-line flags.
-> freedink-dfarc does not find "dinkedit" or "dink", which are links to
binaries built in freedink-engine. Once again, freedoms 1 and 3 are a
little more difficult to exercise than reasonably expected given what
guix provides, but not violated. To point freedink-dfarc to the correct
binaries, one must copy the store location in the wrapper script
produced by freedink. Obviously, this store location will not
automatically be updated when freedink-engine is upgraded.
-> Because the wrapper hard-codes a location to look for the data, I
suspect (but have yet to confirm) that an attempt to use freedink-dfarc
to build a modified version of freedink will ultimately throw an error.
There must be a way to re-package freedink such that:
1) It works with the custom source build features provided by guix.
2) The guix wrapper freedink-dfarc is neither necessary for running
freedink, nor broken when used to run freedink.
The solution could be as simple as publicly exposing freedink-engine and
freedink-data, and redefining the freedink package to simply take the
two packages as inputs and produce a wrapper script. The script should
probably have a name other than "freedink" or "dink" so all three
packages can optionally co-exist in the same profile without a name
conflict. I will try this solution and send a patch if it passes the
following tests:
-> The sources for all freedink-related packages can be produced with
"guix build --source" or "guix build --sources=all"
-> all freedink-related packages can be installed and packed with
modified local sources specified by --with-source
-> installing freedink does not add anything to the profile other than a
wrapper script.
-> There is no name conflict between the executables provided by
freedink-engine and freedink
If anyone knows why freedink is packaged the way it is and thinks it is
better that way, I want to know your reasons before I begin to attempt
to fix this issue, because those reasons could lead me to a different
approach.
I suspect freedink is not the only package with these issues.
-Jesse