Re: distinguishing between applications and libraries

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Jakob,

> But since we're having this conversation now, I'd like to ask: does it
> make sense to use 'define-public' for dependencies like that? I'd be
> adding a lot of 'go-github-com-...' packages like those in
> 'gnu/packages/syncthing.scm'.

I’d use define-public for all packages unless there are good reasons not
to.  A good reason would be that the package *cannot* be used for
anything else (e.g. when it’s a custom variant of a library that would
otherwise be bundled but we decided to build it separately).

We hid “gcc” because users would install it instead of “gcc-toolchain”
and be surprised that it didn’t work.

I would not hide a package just because it is a less popular dependency
of some more popular tool.

--
Ricardo