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I am somewhat hopeful for what Guix might mean for their "Shepard" init system and (specifically GPL) microkernels like HURD. The guile package management syste

I am somewhat hopeful for what Guix might mean for their "Shepard" init system and (specifically GPL) microkernels like HURD. The guile package management system isn't to interesting in my opinion: we already have distros like Gentoo, Nix, Arch, Alpine, etc. that support both build scripts (usually as some specialized shell script) and binary packages. If anything, I think as programmers we tend to lean towards application-specific languages where we ought to favor generic languages for the sake of simplicity. Because it's under the GNU name and seems somewhat kernel-agnostic, I think this might lead to the case where we can finally point towards a operating system and say "that's GNU".

pmoriarty 4y ago
"The guile package management system isn't to interesting in my opinion: we already have distros like Gentoo, Nix, Arch, Alpine, etc. that support both build scripts (usually as some specialized shell script) and binary packages." The big win you get with Guix over the package managers in the other systems you reference (except for Nix) is deterministic, bit-identical, reproducible builds.[1] "as programmers we tend to lean towards application-specific languages where we ought to favor generic languages for the sake of simplicity" Guix does use a general purpose programming language: Guile Scheme. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducible_builds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducible_builds
- cowtools 4y ago
  If I have to learn a programming language just so I can use a single thing, then it might as well be an application-specific language. That being said, I will look into guile anyways. I have a little project I'm working on that could benefit from a lisp-like configuration file, and I've currently implemented a crappy s-expression interpreter already.
  - rscho 4y ago
    Guile scheme is made to be easily embeddable. You should definitely try it. If you want to go the minimalist way, there is also S7, which is very good.

pmoriarty 4y ago

"The guile package management system isn't to interesting in my opinion: we already have distros like Gentoo, Nix, Arch, Alpine, etc. that support both build scripts (usually as some specialized shell script) and binary packages." The big win you get with Guix over the package managers in the other systems you reference (except for Nix) is deterministic, bit-identical, reproducible builds.[1] "as programmers we tend to lean towards application-specific languages where we ought to favor generic languages for the sake of simplicity" Guix does use a general purpose programming language: Guile Scheme. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducible_builds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducible_builds

cowtools 4y ago
If I have to learn a programming language just so I can use a single thing, then it might as well be an application-specific language. That being said, I will look into guile anyways. I have a little project I'm working on that could benefit from a lisp-like configuration file, and I've currently implemented a crappy s-expression interpreter already.
- rscho 4y ago
  Guile scheme is made to be easily embeddable. You should definitely try it. If you want to go the minimalist way, there is also S7, which is very good.