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Introducing GNU Guix

lists.gnu.org

11–20 of 113 posts

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#11
post #4

> 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 :(

GNU Hurd finished? Good one :)

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#12
post #11
post #4

> 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 :(

GNU Hurd finished? Good one :)

With e17 in alpha, Hurd has to be around the corner.

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#13
> A distribution built by GNU hackers is a great opportunity to improve consistency and cohesion in GNU!

Because the existing fragmentation of GNU package management is too confusing, so we need a new standard for everyone to rally round.

[http://xkcd.com/927/]

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#14
It seems everyone reinvents package management poorly again and again. Some things that obviously stand out to me:

* Why utilize scheme? It's declaritive utilize a markup like yaml, don't go off the deep end because you can.

* Utilize OS specific features such as jails, bind mounts, namespaces, you can have the same NIX style separation without destroying FHS.

* Parse the config files for options, it's easy cmake, autocrap, etc all have parsable formatting this way you don't need to mess with adding build time options.

* Parse the source for dependencies, there are lots of white papers of people doing this and beating human made spec files.

* Utilize machine learning for classification of options, dependency resolution (utilizing previous data).

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#16
Can someone explain what benefits do I get for using this rather than the package manager offered by my distribution? And do you need root access to install guix? Because if you do then

> unprivileged package management

seems quite, well, useless imho. If on the other hand everything in guix lives in the userland, I can see myself using it in the servers I don't have root-access to..

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#17
post #10

What problem does it solve?

Does it need to? It's for hackers, not for every user. If you're bored and feel like hacking on something, this might interest you. If it doesn't, Mr. Ludovic is not trying to force you to use it.

For me, some of its features, specially non-privileged user package management, are interesting. I'm not so much interested in the distribution at the moment, more in the package manager. I imagine there aren't many supported packages yet, so it's a matter of writing scripts... eventually it can become a distribution. Not for everyone.

But I still see no problem in more package managers being out there - any one has a problem with yum / apt being two different package managers? Why is yet another package manager is a bad thing?

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#18
post #16

Can someone explain what benefits do I get for using this rather than the package manager offered by my distribution? And do you need root access to install guix? Because if you do then > unprivileged package management seems quite, well, useless imho. If on the other hand everything in guix lives in the userland, I can see myself using it in the servers I don't have root-access to..

No, you do not need root access in order to install guix. Put it in your home folder, there, done. For ease of use add it to your $PATH.

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#20
post #8
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.)

Then, why reinvent the obvious other wheel?

http://nixos.org/nix/

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