Debian has the advantage of a much larger collection of packages, and honestly has a much stronger community process than Guix in many ways. So I think this could be symbiotic.

I think I'm failing to communicate that though.

@cwebber i was wondering if ostree could take the place of the nix/guix store. Also can the guix's bootstrap libraries be built from source yet?

@alienghic I don't know how ostree works well enough to comment I'm afraid...

@cwebber its an enabler for flatpak, has a git like content addressable store and builds virtual filesystems to run processes in. https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

@alienghic @cwebber

what does "git like" mean, in this context ?

@catonano @cwebber I think it means a content addressable database. files are packed into a store and there's a hash based index. The database appears to support transactions and can negotiate a delta between the current state and the upstream repository.

@alienghic @cwebber

interesting

I can't comment either, though

it's too much and I don't know enough

thanks for your clarification !

@catonano ok now im wondering what the git like command does? Favorites a commit?

@alienghic

Which git like command ?

@catonano Oh there isn't one. But I was scrolling up and thought that "git like" looks like all the other git commands, like "git blame" or "git add". So I wondered what "git like" might do.

Just being a bit silly.

@cwebber i'm really hoping for some kind of phase shift that allows debian to cope with the new reality of a gazillion fast-moving language-specific package managers. if the project seizes up and atrophies, we all stand to lose a great deal. for all its flaws, i can't think of any other group that embodies the same kind of history or is a stronger bulwark against for-profit ownership of the entire ecosystem.

@brennen It's not going to be able to cope unless it provides a path forward to allow developers to do local development in their own environments in such a manner that encourages building a package that is reproducible and easily built in such a distribution.

@cwebber yeah, i think that's a major facet of what seems like a pretty big problem in general.

@cwebber ...and maybe the truth is that it's not going to be able to cope.

on the other hand, i've been using debian for close to 20 years now. i sure wouldn't have expected that when i started, so i'm not exactly giving up yet.

@cwebber It's easy for me to see how they can be complementary; Debian is the bedrock that you can 100% trust will never break while Guix gives you a way to pull in the wild and wooly bleeding edge without compromising your ability to safely roll back.

Every developer is also a user who needs the base system to just work without a lot of effort.

@technomancy @cwebber

I feel this is related. A new python tool; pypenv

It offers many features similar to what Guix offers

For exampe they mention graphs of dependencies and reproducible builds

It's specific for Python projects of course

But as for how to get it, they suggest Nix

https://github.com/pypa/pipenv

@cwebber @technomancy

It's interesting that they completely overlook the fact that Nix strives to offer the same things but for all the languages

And yet they mention it anyway !

Is this a good thing or a bad thing ?

I don't know

@catonano I suspect in this case it's because while the tool itself is packaged with Nix, the libs it pulls in are not? So it has a wider reach than Nix because it has more mindshare in the Python community.

@technomancy

in fact in these days there's a discussion on the guix-dev mailing list about the python subsystem in Guix and it emerrges that a common use case is that people want to run python virtualenvs ON TOP of Guix envs

So there seems to be a similar issue of mindshare among pythonistas

If that's the case, Ludo's idea of live channels (or how he calls them in that HN comment) could be spot on

@technomancy 100% stable? Really? Or right many run Debian stable and not testing.

@alienghic yes, in my experience 100% except for in cases where the chrome team refuses to backport security fixes that are too big for Debian's team to handle on their own

@cwebber nix and guix both cause a viceral feeling of distrust and disgust in me that I don't fully understand. :-/ they just seem wrong from what I have read. But then I hate the way things like Node and Ruby work too. I think I'm just too old/inflexible...

@cwebber @kelly_clowers which is funny because unlike some that I feel are too old/inflexible, I have jumped right on Systemd and Wayland...

@kelly_clowers There's no need for there to be a division. You can run Guix and Nix as userspace package managers.

It would be good if one could "apt-get install guix". However Guix wants to have its packages be built in /gnu/, and Debian won't have that because it violates the FHS. IMO this refusal actually hurts Debian (and Guix!) because it means developers will keep writing things using tooling that encourages Debian-incompatible packaging.

@cwebber @kelly_clowers ... That does sound like a terrible place. Why do they want it there??

@kelly_clowers A couple of reasons... rather than /nix/, /gnu/. Another reason why not /opt/gnu/ which has been suggested before: it's only /opt/ if you're on another distro, and there are actual limitations in how many characters you can have on a shebang and long content-addressed paths mean that having more than 3 characters may be a bad idea.

@cwebber @kelly_clowers kinda surprised it's not relocatable. Guess I need to actually study it... I definitely worry about the future of Debian if something doesn't change, and it doesn't seem like the langs are going to adopt sane packaging/versioning, so.

@kelly_clowers It is relocatable, the problem is that like Debian, Guix ships prebuilt binaries, and they'd have to all be rebuilt if put in a different location.

@cwebber

the human factor is always the main challenge 😕

@cwebber I can't even envision how that would work (but haven't thought about till now)... Could that be done without drastically changing fundamentals of deb/dpkg/apt?

@kelly_clowers It doesn't require Debian to do anything other than permit the /gnu/ directory. Guix can run as a userspace package manager which doesn't conflict with apt at all.

@cwebber @kelly_clowers so basically using guix as a common/shared version of node/Ruby/python/etc package systems? I guess there is value in have a common one at least...

@kelly_clowers Yep, you can do both dev libraries of C and Python at the same time in Guix for instance and have no conflicts with the "root system".

@cwebber @kelly_clowers thanks for all your replies! I know, I need to stop being lazy and do my research

@kelly_clowers Nah you're doing great... hope my replies were helpful

@cwebber @kelly_clowers very!

@cwebber @kelly_clowers I guess we could always change the FHS :-P

@cwebber What implications would this have on the current ecosystem that Debian provides with its own packages?

@deadsuperhero None. Guix can be run on a userspace package manager that doesn't conflict with Debian's packages. I ran Debian + Guix that way for over a year.

@cwebber Tbh, I love this idea. Even with my Debian developer hat on.

There are things Debian can't solve on its own, which Guix covers nicely. This should be embraced.

@algernon Yay! What can / should we do to convince others? :)

@cwebber https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=850644

@ted @joeyh @liw Nix and (coming soon) Guix channels could help with this?

@cwebber @joeyh @liw I can't seem to find for sure, but I think that those have the same problems as Ubuntu PPAs. Mostly that once you install one you're basically giving anyone who can upload to it root access on your machine. Doesn't scale as you have to trust too many people.

@cwebber @joeyh If I had time, I guess I should have a look at Nix and Guix. And learn Haskell, Rust, Lisp (re-learn), and a thouand other things.

@cwebber @liw I appreciated that comment, but the actual redeeming part of the HN thread is two responses to a "why not just container" comment:

1. You're describing Nix.
2. You're describing Windows.

LOL

(They're actually describing lithification, that concept of r0ml's needs more attention.)