One aspect of Guix I found to be really fascinating: That there is basically no conceptual difference between defining a package as a private build script, and using a package as part of the system.

Let me explain: Say you wrote a little program in Python which uses a C library (or a Rust library with C ABI) which is in the distribution. Then, in Guix you would put that librarie’s name and needed version into a manifest.scm file which lists your dependency, and makes it available if you run guix shell in that folder. It does not matter whether you run the full Guix System, or just use Guix as s package manager.

Now, if you want to install your little python program as part of your system, you’ll write an install script or package definition, which is nothing else than a litle piece of Scheme code which contains the name of your program, your dependency, and the information needed to call python’s build tool.

The point I am making is now that the only thing which is different between your local package and a distributed package in Guix is that distributed packages are package definitions hosted in public git repos, called ‘channels’. So, if you put your package’s source into a github or codeberg repo, and the package definition into another repo, you now have published a package which is a part of Guix (in your own channel). Anybody who wants to install and run your package just needs your channel’s URL and the packages name. It is a fully decentral system.

In short, in Guix you have built-in something like Arch’s AUR, just in a much more elegant and clean manner - and in a fully decentralized way.

  • balsoft@lemmy.ml
    9·
    1 day ago

    One aspect of Guix I found to be really fascinating: That there is basically no conceptual difference between defining a package as a private build script, and using a package as part of the system.

    This is true for Nix as well.

    The two main advantages of Guix are the language (which is well-known and comes with lots of good tooling and other support) and the package bootstrapping.

    • Shareni@programming.dev
      10·
      1 day ago

      The main disadvantages I’ve faced when trying it a few years ago:

      • non-free packages need to use a non-official channel
      • I had to install guixos through the iso provided by systemcrafters to have non-free drivers
      • I couldn’t get any help from the official guix irc because I used the modified iso, even though the issue had absolutely nothing to do with it
      • there’s significantly less packages in both than in nix, and they’re usually seriously outdated (the docker package was behind Debian for example)
      • even when I enabled downloading precompiled bins, some packages like firefox and chromium would still compile all night long

      At the time it was a great concept, but essentially useless for anything not Emacs/Haskell related.

      • paequ2@lemmy.today
        2·
        9 hours ago

        non-free packages need to use a non-official channel

        It’s very easy to add additional channels and non-official channels integrate pretty well into everything. I don’t really notice if a package comes from an “official” channel or “non-official” channel.

        • Shareni@programming.dev
          2·
          8 hours ago

          Address not found.

          Also, it doesn’t change the fact you’re depending on some random person’s repo that is not moderated in any way.

      • balsoft@lemmy.ml
        6·
        1 day ago

        Yep. I feel like Guix is surprisingly awesome and polished in a couple places, but mostly it’s a very DIY distro, much more so than even NixOS.

      • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
        35·
        1 day ago
        • non-free packages need to use a non-official channel
        • I had to install guixos through the iso provided by systemcrafters to have non-free drivers

        Yeah. See, drivers are part of the hardware abstraction layer which in a Linux system is the Kernel. The kernel is GPL, so it is hard to get support for hardware with drivers without GPL, it does not conform Linux’ license.

        I, too, had also nothing but hassle with an NVidia graphics card in Debian. It was a happy day when I finally ditched it for a supported card and had a fully supported system!

        The other thing… let’s turn the question around. Would you:

        • expect from Apple that you get your Mac with The Gimp pre-installed?
        • From Microsoft that they pre- install LibreOffice and provide it for free in their app store?
        • Expect from IBM or Brother that they develop and give you free drivers for their competitor’s hardware?
        • Expect from Google that they give you free LaTeX support?
        • Expect from Adobe that they host and staff tje Linux Kernel Mailing List for free?

        If not - why do some people expect equivalent things from free software projects?

        • Shareni@programming.dev
          6·
          1 day ago

          The kernel is GPL, so it is hard to get support for hardware with drivers without GPL, it does not conform Linux’ license.

          It’s a violation that’s not enforced, as almost all distros provide proprietary blobs. They balance ideology with usability, since they realised most people aren’t going to use a librebooted ThinkPad from the 90s. If everyone enforced libre purism like GNU, desktop Linux would’ve been completely dead long ago. If you need proof, check usage statistics for any of the free distros.

          I, too, had also nothing but hassle with an NVidia graphics card in Debian.

          And did you need to install a modified iso to have WiFi? Did maybe Debian provide those nvidia drivers?

          The other thing… let’s turn the question around. Would you:

          How is any of that relevant? This is not a question of additional software or services, but basic usability. Guixos as is, is for example essentially useless on a laptop unless you’re willing to carry an external WiFi card in your pocket.

          If not - why do some people expect equivalent things from free software projects?

          The only expectation I have for an OS is to work on my devices, guixos does not. And even when I jumped through all of the hoops to get it working, I still needed to use nix to install most packages I need to work. So why would I use guixos+nix+flatpak instead of just running nixos?

    • msherburn33@lemmy.ml
      32·
      1 day ago

      The two main advantages of Guix are the language

      I wouldn’t call that an advantage for the average person. Nix is far nicer to work with. Some Lispers might disagree, but I, for one, can’t exactly see the beauty in trying to turn Scheme into a configuration language with macros and hacks. Also Guix puts Scheme everywhere, things you can do with plain old Bash in Nix, you’ll have to all do in Scheme in Guix, so there is a much steeper learning curve.

      • balsoft@lemmy.ml
        6·
        1 day ago

        Well, Nix language is also full of hacks, idiosyncrasies and stupid decisions. I say that as someone who’s writing it “professionally”, i.e. as part of my job. Scheme is way less “unexpected”. But there are other parts of Guix which are pretty weird or just bad, like the “channels”/“pins” management situation.

        • msherburn33@lemmy.ml
          1·
          19 hours ago

          You prefer:

               (add-after 'install 'remove-examples
       (lambda* (#:key outputs #:allow-other-keys)
         (with-directory-excursion
             (string-append (assoc-ref outputs "out") "/lib")
           (for-each delete-file
                     (list
                      "basic-server"
                      "helloworld"
                      "postcollector")))

          over:

          postInstall = ''
   rm  $out/lib/basic-server $out/lib/helloworld $out/lib/postcollector
''

          ?

          • balsoft@lemmy.ml
            2·
            6 hours ago

            Bash code should definitely be

            rm -f "$out"/lib/{basic-server,helloworld,postcollector}
          • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
            0·
            10 hours ago

            Yes, having programmed bash and its predecessors for 30 years and several lisps (Clojure, Racket, Guile, a little SBCL) in the last 15 years, I very much prefer the Scheme version in this place.

            Why?

            • This code fragment is part of a much larger system, so readability and consistency counts
            • The Guile version supports a more powerful functionality, which is that evaluation of a package can have several extra results (called outputs). It is over a year that I read about that in the Guix documentation and yet I recognize it immediately.
            • the code tells me that it is removing examples.
            • the code fits neatly into a tidy system of several stages of build and packaging
            • the code uses a structured loop. Of course you can do that in shell as well - I am pointing this out because the bash version is a bit shorter because it does not use a loop.
            • Scheme has much safer and more robust string handling. The code will not do harmful things if a file name contains white space or happens to be equal to 'echo a; rm -rf /etc/*'.
            • Scheme strings handle Unicode well
            • If there is an error, it will not be silently ignored as is the norm in shell scripts which are not written by experts, but will throw it.
            • the code has less redundancy. For example, the bash version mentions three times the subfolder “lib”, the Guile version only once. This makes it easier to refactor the code later.
            • balsoft@lemmy.ml
              1·
              5 hours ago

              I agree with your overall point, that having a single consistent functional language for package descriptions and build scripts is a great thing, and that bash is awful, but your reasoning is somewhat flawed. The main drawbacks of bash are somewhat rectified in Nix because bash is very much contained/sandboxed, which prevents arbitrary damage to the system, and there are some nice defaults in stdenv too.

              The Guile version supports a more powerful functionality, which is that evaluation of a package can have several extra results (called outputs). It is over a year that I read about that in the Guix documentation and yet I recognize it immediately.

              Nix also supports multiple outputs (in fact this is where the concept of outputs in Guix came from)

              the code tells me that it is removing examples.

              You could also do that with Nix in an easier and more declarative fashion, either by adding a comment, or by doing this:

              postInstallPhases = [ "removeExamplesPhase" ];
removeExamplesPhase = ''
  rm -f "$out"/lib/{basic-server,helloworld,postcollector}
'';

              Scheme has much safer and more robust string handling. The code will not do harmful things if a file name contains white space or happens to be equal to ‘echo a; rm -rf /etc/*’.

              Bash is just two double quotes away from doing this too. See code above for an example

              Scheme strings handle Unicode well

              Bash also handles Unicode well

              If there is an error, it will not be silently ignored as is the norm in shell scripts which are not written by experts, but will throw it.

              Nixpkgs stdenv sets set -eu which has a similar effect. If that code fails, the entire build will fail too.

              the code has less redundancy. For example, the bash version mentions three times the subfolder “lib”, the Guile version only once. This makes it easier to refactor the code later.

              This is also really quite easy to rectify in bash, see code above.

  • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
    4·
    1 day ago

    I’d argue that using Scheme as a configuration language is not such a steep barrier. Any Emacs user has surely done a little bit of configuration setup by pasting bits of configuration statements into a file called .emacs . Well, the configuration language he or she was using is actually Emacs Lisp. There is no border between configuring Emacs by text file, and writing code in Lisp.

    • msherburn33@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 day ago

      The biggest problem with Scheme as config language is that it is sloooooowwwww. Nix is already quite sluggish when it comes to configuration changes, in Guix it’s a lot worse, and it’s unlikely to change anytime soon, given that Scheme allows macros and other hacks that might make it difficult to properly cache or index the package database.