Re: Fw: Question regarding qmk firmware

[Fredrik Salomonsson]

John Kehayias <john.kehayias@protonmail.com> writes:

> Hello,
>
> On Sun, Oct 08, 2023 at 10:34 AM, Ekaitz Zarraga wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> I want to forward this message to guix-devel because it is a clear
>> case of some (actually good) technical decision affecting users in
>> unexpected ways.
>>
>> Now, after the change, a user might run `guix search avr-toolchain`
>> and find nothing. Same for ARM.
>>
>
> In this case would it have helped to deprecate the package? Or can we
> (ab)use this as a way to notify a user that either something has
> changed (use a procedure now) or that a package you might expect at
> this name is available some other way?
>
>> This is a shame, because we have toolchains for those architectures
>> but converting them to a function that returns the package leave many
>> users that are not used to read guix's code thinking those packages
>> are gone.
>>
>> Maybe we should create some kind of fake packages that show up in
>> `guix show` and `guix search` that have a short tutorial on how to use
>> packages that come from a function like these.
>> This way providing the same interface for every package regardless
>> where they are coming from.
>>
>
> At the very least this should be documented, perhaps adding to
> information about the kernel in the manual and generally
> customizing/building your own.
>
> I like the idea in general of making sure people can find things and
> if they are not where you'd expect not having a hard time to find
> them. Some tips in a package description about how to use or where to
> look in the manual for information would be good, but I don't think
> we'd want to get too verbose here, adding another maintenance point
> that should be proper documentation (or cookbook).
>
> As an example, we don't need to always say how to add udev rules from
> a package, but letting users know (if it is not obvious from the name)
> that rules are included and should be added to a system configuration
> for something to work (pointing to the manual about udev service) I
> think can be helpful. I don't know though, I guess the package's
> documentation itself needs to tell a user how to use it, and then one
> looks in the Guix manual how to add udev rules.
>
> Anyway, perhaps I run on a tangent here.
>
> John
>
>> I leave it as food for thought.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Ekaitz
>>
>>

Adding my two cents here as a user.

It would be great to have some sort of documentation about this.  Just a
tiny snippet on how to use them will be sufficient.

And a guix pull --news that notified you about the packages changed to
procedures.  It was not obvious to me when avr-toolchain disappeared how
to proceed.  I had to look in the commit log to figure out what happened
to it (the issue tracker would probably also have worked).  Even then it
wasn't super obvious how I would use them as my mind was fixed on the
`guix shell PACKAGE0 PACKAGE1 …` workflow.  I never really use manifests
as I have guix home to handle all my packages, and guix.scm for package
development.

-- 
s/Fred[re]+i[ck]+/Fredrik/g