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Removing Guix from Debian

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Re: Removing Guix from Debian

#11

Post by opello »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #7
pxc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that it doesn't build with releases of GCC from April 2025 onward, at least with default settings, because it doesn't build with the C23/C++23 standards. https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1096790 Maybe such changes are more substantial than the typical differences between GCC releases?

Surely if that's all they would just build with an explicit -std=whatever setting?

Looking at the build log in the linked Debian issue, there is an argument setting -std=c++11. It seems as though an implicit inclusion of had been provided by libstdc++ in the past and was removed as of GCC 15.

https://github.com/bpftrace/bpftrace/pull/3407

https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc-patches/2024-August/659176...

Looks like they did in fact add the header detail to the porting guide:

https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-15/porting_to.html#header-dep-change...

Re: Removing Guix from Debian

#12

Post by trelane »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #5
tucnak wrote: post #3

It's a shame that yet another project (bcachefs in Linux kernel) and now guix are getting ostracized out of mismanagement... on whoever's part, although in all honestly, and this is a hot take mind you; guix should either be run on bare metal, to take advantage of its bootstrap-from-source, thus avoiding debian in the first place, OR be running as guest, in some fantasical gnu hurd environment, thus forgoing linux. I…

> I say this as a long-term guix user. Curious, what is your need / use case? I typically just stick to the package manager for whatever OS I install, if I don't like theirs, I find a new OS.

If you install guix as a user, it augments or overrides the software available on your base system.

It helps a lot on Chromebooks, where it's not straightforward to get a recent release.

It also helps to get up-to-date packages if you're a regular user and your admin doesn't have them for some reason (maybe RHEL or Ubuntu LTS.)

Or even just if your admin doesn't have the packages installed.

Re: Removing Guix from Debian

#13

Post by giancarlostoro »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #9
giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I say this as a long-term guix user. Curious, what is your need / use case? I typically just stick to the package manager for whatever OS I install, if I don't like theirs, I find a new OS.

Not the GP, but: For Guix in general? That's easy to answer: (1) Making things reproducible. That is one of the main reasons. And not only installed system packages. You can also use it to build reproducible projects you develop, if the dependencies are available on Guix. (2) The other one is installing software, that your distribution doesn't have in standard repos.

So its similar to Nix? I've heard similar of Nix.

Re: Removing Guix from Debian

#14

Post by mikepurvis »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #13
zelphirkalt wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the GP, but: For Guix in general? That's easy to answer: (1) Making things reproducible. That is one of the main reasons. And not only installed system packages. You can also use it to build reproducible projects you develop, if the dependencies are available on Guix. (2) The other one is installing software, that your distribution doesn't have in standard repos.

So its similar to Nix? I've heard similar of Nix.

Nix and guix ("geeks") are close cousins, and both can be an entire OS or be used just to manage a single workspace/project on another OS.

There was a solid piece on here a few weeks ago comparing the two, written by someone with in-depth knowledge of Nix: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44569032

Re: Removing Guix from Debian

#16

Post by terminalbraid »

msgodel wrote: post #10
tucnak wrote: post #3

It's a shame that yet another project (bcachefs in Linux kernel) and now guix are getting ostracized out of mismanagement... on whoever's part, although in all honestly, and this is a hot take mind you; guix should either be run on bare metal, to take advantage of its bootstrap-from-source, thus avoiding debian in the first place, OR be running as guest, in some fantasical gnu hurd environment, thus forgoing linux. I…

Just using Guix requires a pretty substantial amount of administrative work. I'd imagine maintaining it is even more intense and that's why they're running into issues like this. You have to be pretty slow to be outrun by Debian of all distros.

It's not the slowness of releases, it's the fact they don't release any stable version with just security fixes. They only make new cumulative releases. Debian's model is to fix a version for their release and do security patches on that, not to push out the latest version.

Re: Removing Guix from Debian

#17

Post by JohnFen »

Arcuru wrote: post #15

> According to Debian's popularity contest (popcon) statistics, there are not quite 230 systems with Guix installed.

But most people using Debian turn popcon off. I don't at all doubt that Guix is not used by most people, but I'm quite certain the number of users is well above 230.

Re: Removing Guix from Debian

#18

Post by felixg3 »

trelane wrote: post #12
giancarlostoro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I say this as a long-term guix user. Curious, what is your need / use case? I typically just stick to the package manager for whatever OS I install, if I don't like theirs, I find a new OS.

If you install guix as a user, it augments or overrides the software available on your base system. It helps a lot on Chromebooks, where it's not straightforward to get a recent release. It also helps to get up-to-date packages if you're a regular user and your admin doesn't have them for some reason (maybe RHEL or Ubuntu LTS.) Or even just if your admin doesn't have the packages installed.

I feel like that brew, or better yet, nix are great options for userspace applications in Linux and macOS

Re: Removing Guix from Debian

#19

Post by trelane »

felixg3 wrote: post #18
trelane wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you install guix as a user, it augments or overrides the software available on your base system. It helps a lot on Chromebooks, where it's not straightforward to get a recent release. It also helps to get up-to-date packages if you're a regular user and your admin doesn't have them for some reason (maybe RHEL or Ubuntu LTS.) Or even just if your admin doesn't have the packages installed.

I feel like that brew, or better yet, nix are great options for userspace applications in Linux and macOS

Sure, there are other options for this. But this is certainly a use case for guix, which is what the poster was asking about.

Re: Removing Guix from Debian

#20

Post by cestith »

JohnFen wrote: post #17
Arcuru wrote: post #15

> According to Debian's popularity contest (popcon) statistics, there are not quite 230 systems with Guix installed.

But most people using Debian turn popcon off. I don't at all doubt that Guix is not used by most people, but I'm quite certain the number of users is well above 230.

The locales package has over 265k installs in the same recent report that lists 231 copies of guix. That’s less than 0.09% or so.
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