Synchronizing descriptions with GSRC?

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

After some refactoring, commit c4ca941 extends our
<gnu-package-description> structures to incorporate a ‘description’
field whose value is taken from GSRC’s manifest [0].

If you apply this patch:

diff --git a/build-aux/sync-synopses.scm b/build-aux/sync-synopses.scm
index c1049d3..7d64533 100644
--- a/build-aux/sync-synopses.scm
+++ b/build-aux/sync-synopses.scm
@@ -58,5 +58,15 @@
                 (format (guix-warning-port)
                         "~a: ~a: proposed synopsis: ~s~%"
                         (location->string loc) (package-name package)
-                        upstream)))))
+                        upstream)))
+
+            (let ((upstream   (gnu-package-doc-description descriptor))
+                  (downstream (package-description package))
+                  (loc        (or (package-field-location package 'description)
+                                  (package-location package))))
+              (when (and upstream (not (string=? upstream downstream)))
+                (format (guix-warning-port)
+                        "~a: ~a: proposed description:~%    ~a~%"
+                        (location->string loc) (package-name package)
+                        (fill-paragraph upstream 79 5))))))
           gnus)

then ‘make sync-synopses’ reports suggested descriptions (and if you do
it from Emacs with M-x compile, you can use C-x ` to jump to the
location in Guix, and thus easily compare the descriptions.)

After a quick glance over the differences, it’s not clear to me what
should be done.  Often, descriptions in GSRC are shorter that what we
have.  Sometimes they’re the same, or stripped version of those we have.
Sometimes they paraphrase those we have.

Descriptions in Guix are typically taken from the upstream web page or
README file, so I would intuitively feel like the upstream description
better characterizes the package.

I find some of the stripped descriptions better (Bison, for instance),
while others look too terse to me (GMP, MPFR, and MPC, for instance).

Perhaps we should have clearer criteria as for what to put in
descriptions, to start with.

Anyway, what do people think?

Would someone like to compare all these and pick-and-choose?

Thanks,
Ludo’.

[0] http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-guix/2013-04/msg00117.html