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Introducing GNU Guix

lists.gnu.org

21–30 of 113 posts

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

[deleted]

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#22
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

It's not a reinvention, it's a fork: "Guix is based on the Nix package manager." [https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/]

(More info here: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2012-07/msg000..., taken from icebraining below)

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#23
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

According to the site of the project, "Guix is based on the Nix package manager."

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#25
post #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.

Thanks for clearing it up :)

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#26
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.

[deleted]

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then, why reinvent the obvious other wheel? http://nixos.org/nix/

It's not a reinvention, it's a fork: "Guix is based on the Nix package manager." [ https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/ ] (More info here: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2012-07/msg000... , taken from icebraining below)

[deleted]

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#29
post #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 support…

I principle you are right. However in practice there is a sane point where there are so many competing solutions that you have to question why people don't spend their time improving existing solutions instead of adding to the fragmentation.

Re: Introducing GNU Guix

#30
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..

It does feel a bit like it can become a platform independent alternative to something like Cygwin. Along the lines of ActiveState perl, but a whole GNU environment instead.
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