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This doesn't really sound like a feature. Or, at least, not a feature I've ever wished I had. From a purely pragmatic perspective, it means huge swaths of soft
by SwellJoe 12y ago
This doesn't really sound like a feature. Or, at least, not a feature I've ever wished I had.
From a purely pragmatic perspective, it means huge swaths of software have to be rebuilt any time anything gets updated. And, it's become clear now to me that every user is building all their own software (as with ports or Gentoo ebuild, both of which I consider unacceptable package managers for servers for that very reason)...given that, and given that rebuilds now must often span huge piles of software, occasionally with exploding dependency chains, I'm feeling a little queasy imagining trying to administer such a system.
I understand the appeal, from a security perspective (and particularly in a world in which the NSA and other highly capable attackers are willing to exert resources to compromise software at the vendor level), of being able to duplicate a package from source. That's cool. But, why force every user to do so every time they update their software? Am I missing something? Are there also binary packages and being able to verify package builds is optional?
- davexunit 12y agoUsers do not need to build everything for themselves. They can download binaries from the build farm, just as if they were using a binary-based distro. The system is transparent: If a binary is available from an authorized remote machine, Guix will pull from it. If not, Guix will build it locally. To respond to security updates to core packages a lot faster, we are using a technique called 'grafting' that doesn't involve full rebuilds.
- agumonkey 12y agoIt's true and it's an interesting problem, maybe in the future a package identity will only be partially dependent on some inputs, the other inputs being second class variables that don't affect the build the same way. Kinda like the difference between parameters and variables in math. Fa(x) is still F even if a = 1 or 2 ,....