[Nix-dev] Re: [PATCH 1/2] t/scons

[Marc Weber]

Excerpts from Peter Simons's message of Wed Dec 22 00:29:04 +0100 2010:
>  | scons does not automatically propagate the external environment used
>  | to execute scons to the commands used to build target files.
And what will be the result of this? No build will work unless you
change it (or the authors of a package opted out because they felt the
default sucks). Does this help anybody?
If a documentation states "runs rm -fr ~" you're not going to patch it
for the same reason? Because everybody is going to expect that behaviour?

Tell me which harm this patch is likely to cause.

> Your patch, however, modifies SCons to propagate the external environment to
> the build environment. Consequently, that patch changes the specified
> behavior of the tool. If we apply that patch, then it's going to come as a
> major surprise to SCons users, who expect it to behave differently.

Oh surprise: the compilation works although I expected it to not find
gcc?
I like such surprises, don't you as well?

I agree - if you tried using nixos to generate .rpm packages so that you
can install them on debian like systems then there could be a surprise.
Is anybody doing this?

I agree that there is the alternative adding a comment to the scons
package asking users to patch each scons script which is failing for
that reason. I tend to fix things once only if possible.

If there was "scons-path-auto-import" would there be any reason to keep
scons? (because "scons-path-auto-import" would serve everybody?)
This is equal to replacing your "revoke" request by a "change name"
request which is a lot friendlier :)

Marc Weber