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How does Guix compare to NixOS? Now that both have been around a little while, what are the relative merits of Guile and the Nix expression language, in practic

How does Guix compare to NixOS? Now that both have been around a little while, what are the relative merits of Guile and the Nix expression language, in practice? How big is each community? The Guix package list is much smaller than the NixOS list?

agumonkey 12y ago
IIRC, Guix uses dmd as 'init' while NixOS uses systemd, which is full feature (for better or worse), documented and communiti-fied. dmd felt cryptic to use even after a little RTFM session. People on #guix are happy to review our patches though ;)
rekado 12y ago
Guix is not as old as Nix. Guix reuses parts of Nix but replaces the various languages in use for Nix packages and tools with Guile Scheme, both in the "frontend" as well as the "backend". Packages are just regular Guile modules, so the whole thing can readily be used as a library as demonstrated by Guix web, a browser interface.
davexunit 12y ago
I'm a Guix core developer, so my answers below will of course be biased towards Guix. >what are the relative merits of Guile and the Nix expression language, in practice? Nix is a DSL, whereas Guile is a general-purpose programming language. In practice, I find it better to use a general-purpose language, because you have access to all of the features of that language and its libraries for free. >How big is each community? I don't have any stats, but the Nix community is definitely bigger. Both communities are very active. The guix-devel mailing list and the #guix IRC channel are busy places. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-02/threads.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-02/thread... >The Guix package list is much smaller than the NixOS list? Yes. The Guix package list is rapidly growing, though. Patches for new packages come in every day. Our last release had 164 new packages. Hope this helps!

agumonkey 12y ago

IIRC, Guix uses dmd as 'init' while NixOS uses systemd, which is full feature (for better or worse), documented and communiti-fied. dmd felt cryptic to use even after a little RTFM session. People on #guix are happy to review our patches though ;)

rekado 12y ago

Guix is not as old as Nix. Guix reuses parts of Nix but replaces the various languages in use for Nix packages and tools with Guile Scheme, both in the "frontend" as well as the "backend". Packages are just regular Guile modules, so the whole thing can readily be used as a library as demonstrated by Guix web, a browser interface.

davexunit 12y ago

I'm a Guix core developer, so my answers below will of course be biased towards Guix. >what are the relative merits of Guile and the Nix expression language, in practice? Nix is a DSL, whereas Guile is a general-purpose programming language. In practice, I find it better to use a general-purpose language, because you have access to all of the features of that language and its libraries for free. >How big is each community? I don't have any stats, but the Nix community is definitely bigger. Both communities are very active. The guix-devel mailing list and the #guix IRC channel are busy places. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-02/threads.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-02/thread... >The Guix package list is much smaller than the NixOS list? Yes. The Guix package list is rapidly growing, though. Patches for new packages come in every day. Our last release had 164 new packages. Hope this helps!