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Re: [Scsh-hackers] Packaging proposal text docs

To: Eric Knauel <knauel@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>
Subject: Re: [Scsh-hackers] Packaging proposal text docs
From: Michel Schinz <Michel.Schinz@epfl.ch>
Date: Mon Feb 9 11:43:22 2004
Cc: scsh-hackers@lists.sourceforge.net
List-id: Discussion among the implementors <scsh-hackers.lists.sourceforge.net>
Sender: scsh-hackers-admin@lists.sourceforge.net
Le Lundi, 9 fév 2004, à 11:16 Europe/Zurich, Eric Knauel a écrit :

BTW, I'm not sure what --dry-run original intention was, seems like a
good option for debugging the installation procedure, so this little
patch to install-lib.scm simply prints load.scm to stdout if --dry-run
is given:

Nice! The only thing which slightly disturbs me is that it is associated with the --dry-run option. For me this option is meant for the end user, who wants to look at what would happen at package installation time. It basically corresponds to "make -n install", which is something I often use (--dry-run is the long name of -n in GNU make).

My impression is that the end user does not want to see the contents of the load script when using --dry-run. It's more, as you say, something that the package developer wants to use to debug his package definition. So maybe it would be better to add yet another option, say --debug, which would do several things similar to this in order to help debug the package definition.

[In fact, in the long run I'd like to provide some additional script to test package definitions. For example, I think it's very easy to make a mistake when using the get-directory function and request the installation-time directory when what's needed is the running-time directory, or the other way around. That's hard to find out since during most installations these are the same. And there are many other things that one can imagine testing, like "is the load.scm file created?", "are there really no files created when --dry-run is used?", etc.]

So, if you don't mind, I'll associate your patch with a new --debug option and not change the current behavior of --dry-run.

As far as your patch for CVS files is concerned, I also think that it's something useful during debugging, as such files should not appear in the final archive anyway. I'd also enable it only with the --debug option.

Thanks,
Michel.



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