Re: Reporting module errors

[myglc2]

On 11/07/2017 at 23:47 Ludovic Courtès writes:

> Hello!
>
> You’re too fast!  :-)
>
> julien lepiller <address@hidden> skribis:
>
[...]
>
> I’d propose a variant of it, see below.  With this, one gets a message
> like:
>
>   /tmp/config.scm:6:0: module (gnu packages foobar) could not be found
>
> where line 6 is:
>
>   (use-package-modules foobar)
>
> How does that sound?
>
> It lacks the hints that you were proposing, which isn’t great, but I
> think we’d need to provide a homogeneous and internationalized API in
> (guix ui) if we are to display hints.  But overall I like the idea of
> providing hints somehow.
>
> Perhaps we could simply introduce another condition type for hints as a
> first step, similar to ‘&message’?
>
> Speaking of hints, we should have something that suggests a module name
> based on the Levenshtein distance with available modules.  :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Ludo’.

FWIW, if you give me the choice between no hints and the hints produced
by julien's patch translated into a random foreign (to me) language, I
strongly prefer the hints.

Why? Because I am will benefit from the embedded data/examples (e.g.,
`guix package --show=foo | grep location`, which, by the way, will never
be translated) even when I do not understand the surrounding words.

Wouldn't speakers of any language feel this way about these specific
hints?

WDYT?

- George