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Introducing GNU Guix

lists.gnu.org

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Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#4

Post by jacquesm »

> it’s not a bootable distribution yet, but rather one to be installed on top of a running GNU/Linux system.

For a moment there I thought the GNU Hurd had been finished, I misread it as GNU Unix :(

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#5

Post by icebraining »

taejo wrote: post #3

It's "based on Nix", but what's the difference, and why fork?

  Guix & Nix
  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
  and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language.  Guix relies on
  the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
  
  Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
  daemon to perform operations on the store.  At the lowest level, Nix
  “derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
  the store.  Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
  by the daemon to perform the build.  Thus, Guix derivations can use
  derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa); in Guix, the cheat code is
  the ‘nixpkgs-derivation’ procedure.  :-)
  
  With Nix and the Nixpkgs distribution, package composition happens at
  the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
  Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
  composition and builders.
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2012-07/msg0000...

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#7

Post by rlpb »

Debian's dpkg and apt are both GPL2+. What's the reason they are reinventing the wheel here? Is there some kind of licence incompatibility that the GNU project cares about? Is there some kind of major architectural difference? Why is it important enough to fragment Free Software developers over?

I feel that this should be answered in an FAQ, but I can't find the answer anywhere.

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#8

Post by zoul »

rlpb wrote: post #7

Debian's dpkg and apt are both GPL2+. What's the reason they are reinventing the wheel here? Is there some kind of licence incompatibility that the GNU project cares about? Is there some kind of major architectural difference? Why is it important enough to fragment Free Software developers over? I feel that this should be answered in an FAQ, but I can't find the answer anywhere.

From the e-mail:

In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and garbage collection

Maybe that’s enough? (I don’t understand package managers.)

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