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I like to compare Nix to ice-nine from Cat's Cradle, in that it tends towards restructuring whatever it comes into contact with.

• doublepg23 5y ago
  Funny you mention that. Guix which is a fork (of sorts) of Nix is written in Guile Scheme which uses ice-9 as it's namespace in a lot of places. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2010-07/msg00046.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2010-07/msg00...
  • rekado 5y ago
    This gets repeated a lot, but Guix really is not a fork of Nix. Not by any definition of "fork". Also not "a fork of sorts". The term "fork" only applies to one executable: "guix-daemon", which is a literal fork of "nix-daemon". They have, of course, diverged a lot, but this (and nothing else) is truly a fork. Aside from this one executable there is no relationship between the two projects. The daemon takes .drv files that list what preconditions a build has (= other .drv files), what build script to run (= a generated Guile script), and what outputs will exist when the .drv file has been processed. It processes these .drv files in an isolated environment (chroot + namespaces) where only the inputs mentioned in the .drv file are made available. The drv files are not shared among the projects; they are not generated in even superficially similar ways. Guix is not a fork of Nix. "guix-daemon" is a fork of "nix-daemon". Both are implementations of the same idea: functional package management.
    • ShamelessC 5y ago
      This fits my definition of a fork (of sorts). Thanks for the nuance though.
    • doublepg23 5y ago
      I love reading your blogs on Guix, I'll keep that in mind for future reference sorry for the libel ;)