bug#32347: gzip cannot be patched

[Efraim Flashner]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2018 at 03:48:05PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Efraim Flashner <address@hidden> skribis:
> 
> > On Thu, Aug 02, 2018 at 01:32:02PM +0200, Marius Bakke wrote:
> >> Hello!
> >> 
> >> I'm trying to add a patch to 'gzip', but it causes an infinite loop and
> >> eventually the system runs out of memory.
> >> 
> >> It can be reproduced by adding this hunk:
> >> 
> >
> >> modified   gnu/packages/compression.scm
> >> @@ -215,6 +215,7 @@ adding and extracting files to/from a tar archive.")
> >>              (method url-fetch)
> >>              (uri (string-append "mirror://gnu/gzip/gzip-"
> >>                                  version ".tar.xz"))
> >> +            (snippet '(#t))
> >>              (sha256
> >>               (base32
> >>                "16h8g4acy7fgfxcjacr3wijjsnixwsfd2jhz3zwdi2qrzi262l5f"))))
> >> 
> >> [back]
> >> 
> >> I guess this is because gzip itself is a patch input.  Is this something
> >> that can be fixed, or do we have to use "patching phases" in these cases?
> >
> > Its also in commencement.scm, so that might be the loop instead. You
> > could try "unpatching" it there. It looks like it has a pseudo-package
> > inside of glibc-utf8-locales-final, with grep-final a few packages lower
> > being potential inspiration for undoing the modifications in "real
> > gzip".
> 
> Indeed.  The ‘bootstrap-origin’ procedure, defined in (gnu packages
> bootstrap), arranges to use the bootstrap binaries of gzip, patch,
> guile, etc. when patching origins.
> 
> Perhaps we’re missing a use of ‘bootstrap-origin’ somewhere in (gnu
> packages commencement)?
> 

Looks like it in the end. the gzip for glibc-utf8-locales-final uses the
bootstrap guile for its building, but doesn't get the input rewriting
that comes from package-with-bootstrap-guile. With this patch adding the
trivial snippet to gzip doesn't cause an infinite loop anymore. Since
the patch doesn't change the hash of glibc-utf8-locales-final it should
be OK for master.

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0001-gnu-glibc-utf8-locales-final-Wrap-inputs-with-packag.patch
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