stdenv/check-meta: description may not end in period

[dotlambda]

Motivation for this change

in accordance with https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/unstable/#var-meta-description and https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#submitting-changes

Things done

• Tested using sandboxing (nix.useSandbox on NixOS, or option sandbox in nix.conf on non-NixOS linux)
• Built on platform(s)
  • NixOS
  • macOS
  • other Linux distributions
• Tested via one or more NixOS test(s) if existing and applicable for the change (look inside nixos/tests)
• Tested compilation of all pkgs that depend on this change using nix-shell -p nixpkgs-review --run "nixpkgs-review wip"
• Tested execution of all binary files (usually in ./result/bin/)
• Determined the impact on package closure size (by running nix path-info -S before and after)
• Ensured that relevant documentation is up to date
• Fits CONTRIBUTING.md.

The main problem I came across was hackage-packages.nix. Maybe we can automatically remove periods (and probably whitespace) from the end of desciptions upon generating it?
cc @NixOS/haskell
The same goes for the packages in pkgs/development/lisp-modules/quicklisp-to-nix-output/split-sequence.nix.
cc @7c6f434c
... and for poetry2nix
cc @adisbladis

[maralorn]

We certainly can strip dots in cabal2nix. (I mean why wouldn‘t we?) What confuses me is this commit message (that I vaguely remembered) which claims to already have fixed this. But apparently there still are packages with a dot at the end. NixOS/cabal2nix@2a4560c

[dotlambda]

@maralorn https://github.com/NixOS/cabal2nix/blob/e18310f2eae5d2d7b73512b0b75396224fbf76ca/src/Distribution/Nixpkgs/Haskell/FromCabal/Normalize.hs#L36 looks like dots are only removed from the end if there is at most one dot in the description. I see no reason for that restriction.

[7c6f434c]

dots are only removed from the end if there is at most one dot in the description. I see no reason for that restriction.

Technically speaking, only one dot is «full stop» punctuation, multiple dots are ellipsis, which has some meaning beyond «the sentenceends here»

[dotlambda]

Technically speaking, only one dot is «full stop» punctuation, multiple dots are ellipsis, which has some meaning beyond «the sentenceends here»

That's not the only case though: For example, some descriptions contain the word "tar.gz" end a single period at the end.

I could change the regex to |.*[^.]|.*\.\. to allow multiple dots at the end.

[7c6f434c]

Hmm, stupid question: will this also apply to external overlays?

[dotlambda]

Hmm, stupid question: will this also apply to external overlays?

Only if they set checkMeta = true or have somthing like ofborg checking them. See https://github.com/nixos/ofborg#running-meta-checks-locally.

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info