Re: [PATCH 12/13] gnu: Add python-rarfile.

[Leo Famulari]

On Fri, Mar 04, 2016 at 01:42:11PM +0100, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> 
> Leo Famulari <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > * gnu/packages/python.scm (python-rarfile, python2-rarfile): New
> > variables.
> > * gnu/packages/patches/python-rarfile-fix-tests.patch: New file.
> > * gnu-system.am (dist_patch_DATA): Add it.
> > ---
> 
> [...]
> 
> > +    (propagated-inputs
> > +     `(("libarchive" ,libarchive)))
> > +    (home-page "https://github.com/markokr/rarfile";)
> > +    (synopsis "RAR archive reader for Python")
> > +    (description "This is Python module for RAR archive reading. The 
> > interface
> > +is made as zipfile like as possible.")
> > +    (license isc)))
> 
> Does this actually work?  I assumed that our “libarchive” package has no
> support for RAR archives.

I don't know. The libarchive documentation in
'share/man/man5/libarchive-formats.5.gz' does list RAR as a supported
format.

I added python-rarfile since the beets build process fails when it can't
find it. I'd be surprised if it's really necessary though.

In the beets source tarball, the string "rarfile" appears as a test
requirement, and in 'beets/importer.py'. The importer is what a user
invokes to add music to the beets database. Rarfile is not imported as a
module by importer.py, so its absence shouldn't have any effect until a
user actually tries to exercise the feature, if my (weak) understanding
of Python is correct.

I built a beets variant without rarfile, and tested the import
functionality. It works as expected on uncompressed directories. It
fails on archives, but it does that even without this change.

So, what should I do? Patch "rarfile" out of setup.py or package
python-rarfile?