From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Fabio Pesari Newsgroups: gmane.comp.gnu.guix.devel,gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Guix as a Guile package manager Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 11:35:13 +0100 Message-ID: <5690E261.8000704@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1452335736 4718 80.91.229.3 (9 Jan 2016 10:35:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2016 10:35:36 +0000 (UTC) To: guix-devel@gnu.org, guile-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Jan 09 11:35:31 2016 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcggd-guix-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1aHqro-0006dQ-S3 for gcggd-guix-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 09 Jan 2016 11:35:29 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:40032 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aHqrn-0003iS-Uc for gcggd-guix-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 09 Jan 2016 05:35:27 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:53129) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aHqri-0003iC-Qr for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 09 Jan 2016 05:35:24 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aHqrg-0004Or-ON for guix-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 09 Jan 2016 05:35:22 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:57924) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1aHqrb-0004MR-QO; Sat, 09 Jan 2016 05:35:15 -0500 Original-Received: from [87.19.250.97] (port=50259 helo=[192.168.1.5]) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:DHE_RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:128) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1aHqrb-0003rO-7w; Sat, 09 Jan 2016 05:35:15 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Icedove/38.4.0 X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: guix-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.comp.gnu.guix.devel:15030 gmane.lisp.guile.devel:18111 Archived-At: Package managers have been immensely successful in increasing the popularity of programming languages - think about Perl's CPAN or Ruby's Gem. But Guile doesn't a package manager, and that in my opinion slows down its adoption. The Guix repos distribute a lot of useful Guile libraries (like guile-json or guile-opengl) which can't be found on most distro repositories and it already provides Guile APIs and package management capabilities...my question is, can Guix be forked into a full-blown Guile package manager like gem from Ruby? I know that an argument could be made that Guix can already be used in this way, but there are many Scheme coders who don't need a system-wide package manager and would rather use a program that can manage Guile packages under a user root like ~/.guile and allow them to easily distribute their packages (something like Python's virtualenvs would also be useful). Perhaps some of the Guix code can be moved to a library, so that both the Guix and the Guile package manager binaries can reuse the same code. Moving Guix' core to a library would also facilitate its inclusion in things like PackageKit, as well as make it easier to create front-ends. I'm not a package management expert so I'm not sure this idea is feasible but I would really like Guile to become more popular, and this I think would be a step in the right direction.