Subject: Re: bug#25953: [PATCH] gnu: mesa: Build LLVM Gallium drivers.

From: [email-masked] (Ludovic Courtès)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2017 11:58:07 +0100

Mark H Weaver <[email-masked]> skribis:

> > Would it make sense to add a “mesa-minimal” package and a minimal
> > variant of xorg-server where any mesa package is rewritten to be
> > mesa-minimal?
>
> Judging by the number of packages that include 'mesa' as an input, it
> won't be so easy.  Search for ",mesa" in gnu/packages/*.scm, and see the
> output of "guix refresh -l mesa".  The xf86-video-* packages include
> 'mesa' as input, and many other packages as well.

We could somehow provide a way (maybe an xorg-service option) to rewrite
the package graph so that it uses mesa-minimal.  WDYT?

> I won't block this, but I will take this opportunity to mention that for
> those of us who wish to build GuixSD from source code on our own
> machines, life is becoming increasingly uncomfortable as more and more
> optional features are added to our core packages.

This is true, but it’s a problem that concerns GNU/Linux in general;
I don’t think Guix is really special in this regard.

I mean, in the good ol’ GCC 2.95 and GTK+ 2.x days, when D-Bus and its
friends didn’t exist, there was much less to build, right?  :-)

Ludo’.