Re: [PATCH] WIP: Output linters

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

address@hidden skribis:

> The current patch just adds a simple check for the presence of build directory
> strings in the output, which may affect build reproducibility across machines.
> Other checks that might be useful might include checks:
>
> * for "recent" timestamps, which might indicate use of __DATE__ or `date`,
>
> * for presence of '.DIR' or other empty directories,
>
> * for proper placement of documentation,
>
> * for documentation that might best be moved to a "doc" output, or
>
> * for self-contained pkg-config files, etc.

All good ideas!  This reminds me that Taylan had posted a .pc file
parser to check for dependencies that should be propagated; this could
be used as one of the checks.

> Any such checks obviously rely on the package outputs being in the store.  On
> the one hand both local builds and substitutes are expensive.  But on the
> other hand we'd like 'guix lint' to be run before someone submits a patch or
> pushes their commits.  Being a good submitter, they hopefully went through the
> trouble to test that the package builds, so the package outputs are mostly
> likely in the store anyhow, and 'guix lint' wouldn't have any extra work to
> do.
>
> I'd like to hear from others whether they think this WIP has enough merit to
> include in 'guix lint', and if so what other checks might be worth including.

So far such checks were done as extra build phases: ‘validate-runpath’
and ‘validate-documentation-location’.  The advantage is that they
cannot be skipped unwillingly; the build succeeds if and only if all the
checks passed.  The downside is that adding or modifying such a phase
leads to a full rebuild.  Something that is both an advantage and a
downside is that you get to test the rules on all the packages, so you
can (have to :-)) make sure they work well.

I think I prefer keeping such checks as build phases, although perhaps
there are cases where this is inconvenient.

WDYT?

Thanks,
Ludo’.