On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 11:36:14AM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote: > Efraim Flashner skribis: > > I'd also argue that some of the bioinformatics packages are high > > maintenance and no one likes having to update them. > > I agree with the two of you. What I’m saying is that if in addition of > having a high maintenance cost, it’s pretty much unusable, then that’s > not good. I share Efraim's point — maintenance burden has never been a primary reason to exclude things from Guix. I think it's important to handle this patch in a manner that is consistent with the precedent set by years of Guix code review. I'm sorry, I haven't read this entire discussion closely. Tony, does this package seem useful for you? There is a weird gamergate-esque faction in the free software community who hate systemd for reasons that are basically inexplicable. It seems to be one of several proxy battles fought by a far-right [0] political camp in a struggle over the direction of free software (I'm not sure *who* they are fighting... most distros just ignore them). We should recognize their longwinded sophistry for what it is. Systemd works and it works very well. Maybe we *should* start rejecting very high-maintenance contributions if we do not think they will be maintained adequately. But, I do not think that systemd should be the package that spurs that decision, because of the special importance that some people have placed on systemd, which has nothing to do with software, either technically or in terms of software freedom. > Oh you’re saying that someone on a foreign distro might be interested in > running ‘systemctl’ from Guix’ ‘systemd’ package? That sounds like a > bit far-fetched to me, dunno. I use systemd extensively with Guix-on-Debian, and it's one component that I will probably not replace with a Guix package. It's too deeply integrated within Debian for me to feel confident replacing it, although perhaps systemctl will work fine when provided by a 3rd party. I really don't know. The benefits of Guix on other distros — the strong control over the dependency graph and ability to modify it and roll it back — do not hold for systemd, in my opinion. Debian's operating system integration and QA process is good, at this level of the system. [0] I know that's a gross generalization, but it just seems that way to me