Hi Arun,
Maybe even package definitions could benefit from a similar
idea. There
are a lot of simpler packages (think Emacs packages, many Python
packages, etc.) that don't really benefit from the full
expressive power
of scheme. Maybe such a shift could also speed up guix pull
significantly since we won't have to compile scheme source code
all the
time. Here's an illustration for a Julia package. This:
```
(define-public julia-json
(package
(name "julia-json")
(version "0.21.3")
(source
(origin
(method git-fetch)
(uri (git-reference
(url "https://github.com/JuliaIO/JSON.jl";)
(commit (string-append "v" version))))
(file-name (git-file-name name version))
(sha256
(base32
"1l2p852sxq6h5fif3dqshvbw17gb06jmq2nkr88spvp7s0n0nslz"))))
(build-system julia-build-system)
(propagated-inputs
(list julia-datastructures
julia-fixedpointnumbers
julia-parsers
julia-offsetarrays))
(home-page "https://github.com/JuliaIO/JSON.jl";)
(synopsis "JSON parsing and printing library for Julia")
(description "@code{JSON.jl} is a pure Julia module which
supports parsing
and printing JSON documents.")
(license license:expat)))
```
could become:
```
[julia-json]
name = julia-json
version = 0.21.3
source = git+https://github.com/JuliaIO/[email protected]
build_system = julia-build-system
propagated_inputs = [julia-datastructures,
julia-fixedpointnumbers,
julia-parsers, julia-offsetarrays]
home_page = https://github.com/JuliaIO/JSON.jl
synopsis = JSON parsing and printing library for Julia
description = @code{JSON.jl} is a pure Julia module which
supports parsing
and printing JSON documents.
license = Expat
```
Guix supports JSON package definitions. It's documented in the
manual:
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
‘json’
Import package metadata from a local JSON file. Consider the
following example package definition in JSON format:
{
"name": "hello",
"version": "2.10",
"source": "mirror://gnu/hello/hello-2.10.tar.gz",
"build-system": "gnu",
"home-page": "https://www.gnu.org/software/hello/";,
"synopsis": "Hello, GNU world: An example GNU
package",
"description": "GNU Hello prints a greeting.",
"license": "GPL-3.0+",
"native-inputs": ["gettext"]
}
The field names are the same as for the ‘<package>’ record (*Note
Defining Packages::). References to other packages are
provided as
JSON lists of quoted package specification strings such as
‘guile’
or ‘[email protected]’.
The importer also supports a more explicit source definition
using
the common fields for ‘<origin>’ records:
{
...
"source": {
"method": "url-fetch",
"uri": "mirror://gnu/hello/hello-2.10.tar.gz",
"sha256": {
"base32":
"0ssi1wpaf7plaswqqjwigppsg5fyh99vdlb9kzl7c9lng89ndq1i"
}
}
...
}
The command below reads metadata from the JSON file
‘hello.json’
and outputs a package expression:
guix import json hello.json
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
--
Ricardo
