On Thursday, 15 February 2018 at 15:52:41 UTC, John Gabriele wrote:
> It's a bit confusing since the first thing [the Guix webpage](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/) talks about "GuixSD", rather than the Guix tool in its own right.

Yes. We discussed that at the hackathon before FOSDEM. It is rather difficult to position a project that has so many use cases...

> Wow, I didn't realize how established Guix is. It's [packages page](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/packages/) boasts 6868 available packages!

~2000 added in the last year. I am updating the ldc package to 1.7.0 this week.

> Are any other languages using Guix for their 3rd-party online package repo? If not, why?

GNU Guile ;). The current state is that everyone is rolling out some type of language support. The good news is that Guix allows for abstracting existing build systems. If you look at a typical python package you can see it leans on pip:

  https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/python.scm#n1004

The package is written in Guile scheme, but you can see it does not take a genius
to package something. In fact Guix can generate the actual package definition automatically.

We have not written something similar for dub. But I can do that if there is interest.

> Not at all. Seems like an amazing tool!

Agree. Give it a shot. It does not hurt your system because the installer only uses /gnu (for the software) and /var/guix (for the database). To uninstall simply remove those dirs.
Guix never overwrites system directories.

On Thursday, 15 February 2018 at 16:47:35 UTC, Pjotr Prins wrote:
> On Thursday, 15 February 2018 at 15:52:41 UTC, John Gabriele wrote:
>> It's a bit confusing since the first thing [the Guix webpage](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/) talks about "GuixSD", rather than the Guix tool in its own right.
>
> Yes. We discussed that at the hackathon before FOSDEM. It is rather difficult to position a project that has so many use cases...
>
>> Wow, I didn't realize how established Guix is. It's [packages page](https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/packages/) boasts 6868 available packages!
>
> ~2000 added in the last year. I am updating the ldc package to 1.7.0 this week.
>
>> Are any other languages using Guix for their 3rd-party online package repo? If not, why?
>
> GNU Guile ;).

That's excellent. I remember years ago it looked like there was action in getting a Guile package repo going but it never panned out. Glad they found (and settled on) something! (Though <https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/libraries/> doesn't say anything about Guix, and I don't see anything about Guix in the [Guile manual](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/master/guile.html/)).

> The current state is that everyone is rolling out some type of language support. The good news is that Guix allows for abstracting existing build systems. If you look at a typical python package you can see it leans on pip:
>
>   https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/python.scm#n1004
>
> The package is written in Guile scheme, but you can see it does not take a genius
> to package something. In fact Guix can generate the actual package definition automatically.
>
> We have not written something similar for dub. But I can do that if there is interest.

I'd love to see an overview article explaining how the pieces would fit together. Would Guix work with Dub? If so, what specifically (on GNU/Linux) would be required to make that happen, and what would using such a solution look like in practice?

>> Not at all. Seems like an amazing tool!
>
> Agree. Give it a shot.

I don't yet know enough about D and Dub to even know what giving Guix a shot would mean :). I'm on Debian and so use apt for installing software. I'll have to spend some time with the Guix (and Dub) docs.

> It does not hurt your system because the installer only uses /gnu (for the software) and /var/guix (for the database). To uninstall simply remove those dirs.
> Guix never overwrites system directories.

Nice. Easy removal is most appreciated.

On Thursday, 15 February 2018 at 17:54:57 UTC, John Gabriele wrote:
>>> Are any other languages using Guix for their 3rd-party online package repo? If not, why?
>>
>> GNU Guile ;).
>
> That's excellent. I remember years ago it looked like there was action in getting a Guile package repo going but it never panned out. Glad they found (and settled on) something! (Though <https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/libraries/> doesn't say anything about Guix, and I don't see anything about Guix in the [Guile manual](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/docs/master/guile.html/)).

The Guile maintainers effectively use Guix for handling the build chain and dependencies.
See Andy Wingo's blog https://wingolog.org/ - section 'getting the goods' he discusses Guile packaging and Guix. Andy is the main compiler writer of Guile. The following is a bit out of date, but you get the idea

    https://wingolog.org/archives/2015/08/04/developing-v8-with-guix.

> I'd love to see an overview article explaining how the pieces would fit together. Would Guix work with Dub? If so, what specifically (on GNU/Linux) would be required to make that happen, and what would using such a solution look like in practice?

I need to write a BLOG. After the Python one.

> I don't yet know enough about D and Dub to even know what giving Guix a shot would mean :). I'm on Debian and so use apt for installing software. I'll have to spend some time with the Guix (and Dub) docs.

I meant you can try Guix anyway. It will be a gain. I run Guix on top of Debian myself. I am a real Debian fan - using Debian more than 15 years. But when it comes to my development environment and my software deployment I use Guix. Debian can not handle that well enough.