Re: [PATCH] gnu: Add kakoune

[Marius Bakke]

Carlo Zancanaro <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu, Jan 26 2017, Marius Bakke wrote
>> I replaced the patch file with a substitution phase instead ... .
>
> Is this the preferred way to patch reproducibility issues? I don't
> really have a sense of it, but the other packages I have seen have used
> either a patch or a snippet to make a build reproducible.
>
> I don't really have a sense of when I should use a patch, a snippet, or
> a phase. Can you give me a sense of when I should prefer one over the
> others?

When it is a simple s/gzip -f/gzip -f --foo/, I prefer a substitution
over a patch since it's easier to maintain/less chance of conflicts. On
the other hand, they might silently become ineffective. So perhaps a
patch is better.

Now, whether this substitution should be run as a source 'snippet' is a
different question. The package is reproducible for `guix challenge`,
but not for the user verifying this manually with `guix build -S`.

I think that is a bug, and the substitution should run as a snippet
instead. They are for critical bug fixes, e.g. security, reproducibility
or freedom problems. Anything else should go in a phase, AFAIK.

Would you like to fix it? Good catch, sorry for making the mistake on
your behalf!

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