When I get an idea from a program, I like to cite it in case I decide to look back at the source code (Eg. Fleisher, Lukas and Culot, Frederic, 2018). The problem is the guix package manager doesn't have any useful bibliographical information, so I have to hunt for all of it myself. The only useful part is the software version. It would be good if package mangers would state the author, year, download url, and title of the software.

Example citation.

@software{calcurse2018Fleisher, author={Fleisher, Lukas and Culot, Frederic}, title = “CALCURSE”, titleaddon = “text-based organizer”, year=2018, version=“4.5.1”, url={https://calcurse.org/files/calcurse-4.5.1.tar.gz}, note={Downloaded with GNU Guix Package Manager} }

The is an example output of a package description.

name: calcurse version: 4.5.1 outputs: + out: everything systems: x86₆₄-linux i686-linux dependencies: [email protected] tzdata@2022a location: gnu/packages/calcurse.scm:31:2 homepage: https://www.calcurse.org license: FreeBSD synopsis: Text-based calendar and scheduling description: Calcurse is a text-based calendar and scheduling application. It helps keep track of + events, appointments and everyday tasks. A configurable notification system > reminds user of upcoming + deadlines, and the curses based interface can be customized to suit user needs. All of the commands + are documented within an online help system.

Other ways to get the data

For the calcurse program, I got most of the other data by downloading it, and using grep on the files to find author and year information. I realized that this is a fairly bad way to get the data. A much better way would be to use the `–version` option on the file, and to read the man page. The README.md and Contributor files usually have some bibliographical information too.

Man and info pages have the downside of possibly being out of date, or only listing the authors of the man page rather than the program.

Bibliography

Fleisher, Lukas and Culot, Frederic (2018). CALCURSE.

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By Logan Andersen. This work is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0

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