Re: [PATCH] gnu: Add p7zip.

[Kei Kebreau]

Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> writes:

> address@hidden writes:
>
>> On 2016-08-09 04:05, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
>>> Leo Famulari <address@hidden> writes:
>>> 
>>>>> > I see that you took care of removing non-free parts in a patch and a
>>>>> > build phase.  Since “guix build -S p7zip” doesn’t run the build phase
>>>>> > users would still end up with a source archive containing the non-free
>>>>> > parts.  The best way is thus to remove things in a snippet.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > In “shogun” from the “machine-learning” module we remove supporting code
>>>>> > for non-free features in a snippet by cutting out anything between some
>>>>> > ifdef markers, but looking at the patch I see that it wouldn’t be
>>>>> > feasible for p7zip.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Also note that it is not completely desirable for nonfree code to be 
>>>>> removed
>>>>> with a patch, and is one of the reasons Guix supports snippets in the 
>>>>> first
>>>>> place.
>>>> 
>>>> Is there a reason to not use a patch in this case? Or can we proceed
>>>> with packaging p7zip, using a patch to remove non-free parts?
>>> 
>>> We don’t want to have a “reverse image” of the non-free code in a 
>>> patch.
>>> Arguably that would just be a derivative of the non-free code, so we
>>> also couldn’t freely distribute it.
>>> 
>> If this is the case, then should we alert the Parabola GNU/Linux-libre 
>> packagers?
>> The patch I submitted is the same one they use when installing p7zip 
>> from the
>> source code (see 
>> https://git.parabola.nu/abslibre.git/tree/libre/p7zip/libre.patch).
>
> I see.  I think we first need to figure out exactly what license applies
> to which part of the code.  A big chunk of the patch is to remove
> references to RAR stuff in the build system and the documentation; that
> could probably be removed with a patch.  What is critical is code that’s
> actually under the unRAR license.
>
> A quick look at the patch shows me this:
>
>> -  Licenses for files are:
>> -
>> -    1) CPP/7zip/Compress/Rar* files:  GNU LGPL + unRAR restriction
>> -    2) All other files:  GNU LGPL
>
> (https://git.parabola.nu/abslibre.git/tree/libre/p7zip/libre.patch#n540)
>
> This means that we need to delete all files in (1) — for everything else
> it’s just a matter of patching the files.  If I’m not mistaken this
> means that deleting the files in a snippet and applying this patch on
> top of it would be okay.
>
> What do others think?
>
> ~~ Ricardo

Just to clarify, I'm interpreting what you are saying as:

(1) Remove proprietary files in a snippet so "guix build -S p7zip" only
returns free source code, and

(2) Apply the patch to get rid of the resultant unused code.

If you mean those two things, then it sounds like a fine solution to
me. :-)