From d222522edf70cdac6cee7b4ab8fa1bfbf0a7ba9c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: =?UTF-8?q?Ludovic=20Court=C3=A8s?= <ludo@gnu.org>
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2016 15:41:00 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] doc: Discourage software bundling.
Fixes <http://bugs.gnu.org/24008>.
Suggested by ng0 <ng0@we.make.ritual.n0.is>.
* doc/contributing.texi (Submitting Patches): Add item about bundling.
---
doc/contributing.texi | 14 ++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 14 insertions(+)
diff --git a/doc/contributing.texi b/doc/contributing.texi
index a3684a5e1dc..18d891db4e7 100644
--- a/doc/contributing.texi
+++ b/doc/contributing.texi
@@ -288,6 +288,20 @@ name of the new or modified package, and fix any errors it reports
Make sure the package builds on your platform, using @code{guix build
@var{package}}.
+@item
+@cindex bundling
+Make sure the package does not use bundled copies of software already
+available as separate packages.
+
+Sometimes, packages include copies of the source code of their
+dependencies as a convenience for users. However, as a distribution, we
+want to make sure that such packages end up using the copy we already
+have in the distribution, if there is one. This improves resource usage
+(the dependency is built and stored only once), and allows the
+distribution to make transverse changes such as applying security
+updates for a given software package in a single place and have them
+affect the whole system---something that bundled copies prevent.
+
@item
Take a look at the profile reported by @command{guix size}
(@pxref{Invoking guix size}). This will allow you to notice references
--
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