3 ms·
Having a general-purpose programming language to specify your packages with is Really Cool™, and personally (disclaimer: perhaps i am the only person on the pla
by toothbrush 12y ago
Having a general-purpose programming language to specify your packages with is Really Cool™, and personally (disclaimer: perhaps i am the only person on the planet who feels this way) the learning curve for writing packages seems a little less steep than for Nix since Guix uses a language one might already know whereas Nix uses a DSL which i found somewhat obscure and non-intuitive.
Practically, though, Nix has way more packages available since it's been around longer and has a larger user base. But there's no reason not to help by porting your favourite package to Guix!
- listic 12y agook, now how does one install a package manager? I see they are using installation _images_ for some reason... Why does one need an installation _image_ to install a package manager?
- toothbrush 12y agoI'll make an analogy that hopefully won't earn me flames. It's possible to install Guix as an "extra" package manager a bit like Brew in the OS X world, which is done by essentially git-clone'ing the sources and building it in user land. Instructions are here: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Installation.html#Installation https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Installat... . Basically you end up with your Linux system as before, plus Guix now managing packages installed in /gnu/store, which are made accessible via your $PATH. It is therefore relatively simple to try it out that way and blow it all away if you decide it sucks. Otherwise, the images you talk about are for booting a full live system (the Guix OS if you will) which uses Guix as its package manager. This allows you to play around with it and/or install it. This works quite well in a virtual machine such as qemu.