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GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

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Re: GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

#21

Post by tacolizard »

serhart wrote: post #7
rhabarba wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suppose I switched from Linux Mint to GuixSD, what would be the advantages and disadvantages? You'd lose a lot of software choices. Actually, the restriction to "GNU-friendly software" was what made me skip GuixSD so far. I guess that my WiFi wouldn't work.

Not true. You can write your own packages in the same high level interface. Including the mainline Linux kernel and broadcom drivers. I have GuixSd running on my 2013 MBP

can you tell me how you got that running in some more detail? I also have a 2013 MBP and would like to try out GuixSD

Re: GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

#22

Post by zeveb »

bjoli wrote: post #12

For anyone interested in guile, guile 3.0 will have a JIT, making it even faster than 2.2 (by quite a large margin). Guile is becoming really nice, and I find myself reaching for other lisps less and less.

Scheme is a neat little language, but it's really not ideal for writing full software systems. Indeed, Guile & Racket (back when it was PLT Scheme) are perfect exemplars of Greenspun's Tenth Rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp. E.g. GOOPS is similar to CLOS, but missing a bit and unsupported other than in Guile.

Meanwhile, implementations like SBCL are free, compile to machine code and are competitive on some benchmarks with C/C++.

Common Lisp — while it does have some warts — is intended for building long-lived, durable, full-featured systems. It's a really good language, and it standardises quite a lot. Often, what look like warts are actually useful features in large systems.

It really saddens me that so much effort has been expended trying to make Scheme a reasonable language for large systems, when there already exists one which is. That doesn't even get to the bits of Scheme which I believe are mistakes (e.g. a single namespace, making NIL, () & #f different).

Re: GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

#23

Post by rufugee »

peatmoss wrote: post #5

Man, I’ve really wanted to take the plunge and dedicate some play time to GUIX for a while now. I feel like between the GUIX package system and Shepherd, they’re creating an authentically new and exciting thing in the universe of Linux distributions. The fact that they’re using Scheme for so much of it is also pretty cool, as I think this sort of high level systems programming is a great potential use case for showca…

Same here...as a NixOS user, I really wish it used scheme instead of the nix language.

However, I do like the pragmatic nature of NixOS (you're able to easily install non-free packages). GUIX doesn't make this easy at all from what I understand. I appreciate those virtues, but practically speaking, I have to use non-free software on the desktop all the time.

Re: GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

#24

Post by rufugee »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #3

Interesting,after all this criticism of systemd. This makes me wonder about the GuixSD distribution. Is this distro ready for prime-time. Suppose I switched from Linux Mint to GuixSD, what would be the advantages and disadvantages? I like Lisp and program in Racket, so Guile wouldn't be far from that. I just wonder about experiences of other. How much does switching to such a lesser known free distro as the main OS "…

I use nixos, not GuixSD, but I can speak to "what would be the advantages and disadvantages", particularly since guix is a reimplementation of nix.

The benefits to me are immense, because I travel between around six machines on a daily or weekly basis. Prior to moving to NixOS, I'd have to manually keep those machines in sync in terms of software installs, etc. However, after switching to NixOS, I have a set of files I version control which will declaratively build the system the way I want it.

So, if I install a new package and I'd like it be the same across all machines, I simply configure it, commit to git, and then pull down the config on the other machines and do "nixos-rebuild switch". Everything becomes exactly the same.

It's saved me so much time in terms of managing my computing life. I really couldn't see going back to a regular distro after using one which is declarative.

The drawbacks? Well, for one, Nix and Guix have various tricks with symlinking, etc, to make it appear to applications as if it's a typical Linux filesystem, but it's not. E.g. there's no /lib, etc. It's a little weird getting used to.

And with nix, there's the nix language, which isn't that difficult to learn but it's not my favorite. If the underlying language needs to be functional, I'd prefer a lisp over nix. Also, with nixos, there are too many different commands required to learn when you get deeper into it, but work is underway to improve that story.

At least for me...the benefits far outweigh the risks. I don't think I can ever go back. I think there's a real opportunity for a commercially-backed declarative Linux os...it really is a game changer and would do well in the enterprise.

Re: GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

#25

Post by nerdponx »

serhart wrote: post #13
noobermin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a...non official repository of these somewhere?

None that I know of currently. The OS is version 0.15.0. It's very young and doesn't have a huge user base. I'm sure there will be non gnu repositories that will eventually spring up. I've even toyed with the idea of setting one up.

Even as a toy example, a blog post and code that demonstrates setting up a 3rd-party package repository would be helpful. I'm just afraid of the GUIX team deciding they don't want to support 3rd-party repos because it encourages non-free software use, and deliberately stonewalling development of related features.

Re: GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

#26

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

rufugee wrote: post #23
peatmoss wrote: post #5

Man, I’ve really wanted to take the plunge and dedicate some play time to GUIX for a while now. I feel like between the GUIX package system and Shepherd, they’re creating an authentically new and exciting thing in the universe of Linux distributions. The fact that they’re using Scheme for so much of it is also pretty cool, as I think this sort of high level systems programming is a great potential use case for showca…

Same here...as a NixOS user, I really wish it used scheme instead of the nix language. However, I do like the pragmatic nature of NixOS (you're able to easily install non-free packages). GUIX doesn't make this easy at all from what I understand. I appreciate those virtues, but practically speaking, I have to use non-free software on the desktop all the time.

Guix does have the capacity to add 'channels', e.g. https://gitlab.com/mbakke/guix-chromium , so while non-free software while never be part of the distribution itself, it could be done unofficially. Also, you can run the Nix standalone on top of GuixSD, so you could run GuixSD and then use Nix to install whatever's missing.

Re: GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

#27

Post by civodul »

bjoli wrote: post #12

For anyone interested in guile, guile 3.0 will have a JIT, making it even faster than 2.2 (by quite a large margin). Guile is becoming really nice, and I find myself reaching for other lisps less and less.

Guile 3 is truly exciting indeed. See the latest news at https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2018-09/msg00... .

Re: GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

#28

Post by yepguy »

bjoli wrote: post #20
logicchains wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How far along is it towards becoming the underlying runtime for Emacs lisp?

With the bikeshedding we see for much less controversial changes in the Emacs codebase, I suspect it will be released around the release of Duke Nukem forever II. Elisp code runs fine under guile, but it has seen virtually no optimisation work and does a lot of unnecessary work. I suspect there is an lot of low hanging fruit, but since there is virtually no interest in guile-emacs apart from in comments on HN and Red…

I've always thought someone should use guile to add support for elisp plugins to vim & neovim using their rpc interfaces. Then maybe if something like that existed the org-mode authors could be convinced to cleanly separate out the emacs-specific code, and we could have org-mode on vim using the same codebase as emacs.

I have no idea how viable that is, but it would be pretty sweet. Too much for me to take on right now, but the idea has been rattling around my brain for a few years.

Re: GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

#29

Post by tomkat0789 »

Pardon me, I'm sort of a casual Linux user and I have no idea what people are talking about. What are GNU Guix and Shepherd? A cursory glance at Wikipedia makes it seem like they're GNU alternatives to the apt-get and init/systemD I've been on for awhile.

I'm outside of my Debian comfort zone, apologies for my ignorance! What's significant about this?

Re: GNU Shepherd 0.5.0 released

#30

Post by pjmlp »

tomkat0789 wrote: post #29

Pardon me, I'm sort of a casual Linux user and I have no idea what people are talking about. What are GNU Guix and Shepherd? A cursory glance at Wikipedia makes it seem like they're GNU alternatives to the apt-get and init/systemD I've been on for awhile. I'm outside of my Debian comfort zone, apologies for my ignorance! What's significant about this?

Basically they follow similar ideas to NixOS, but using Scheme instead of a custom script language.
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