Re: Newbie thoughts on Guile Hall + Guix

[Zelphir Kaltstahl <zelphirkaltstahl@posteo.de>]

On 2/6/22 16:29, Vijay Marupudi wrote:
> Ognen Duzlevski <maketo@sdf.org> writes:
>
>> Have you tried Racket? If you haven't - try that and you will find
>> recommending Guile to beginners to be much easier ;). On a serious note,
>> there are other schemes that have their own package managers (e.g.
>> Racket).
> I have, but I like Guile better, and want everyone to use it :) I think
> being an extension language is a very useful and important part of what
> makes Guile great.
>
>> IMHO, this learning curve is a part of learning any language. The reason
>> why every language comes with a language "specific" manager is because a
>> lot of people have tried to solve this problem and failed to find the
>> magic bullet. At some level you are relying on the language's
>> portability itself, then on the same level you are wanting to exploit
>> some of the language's specifics, then on the same level someone comes
>> along and says for some packages this approach doesn't work... ;)
> I don't think it's fair to say that using packages in Guile just as
> easy/hard as other languages. Python / Javascript make this incredibly
> easy, and their ecosystem is evidence for that success. Their package
> managers have flaws, but they have benefits too, and those benefits
> would be great for Guile.
>
> Note that I'm not saying that this package manager has to do everything
> expected of a battle-tested production package manager. Just make it
> easier for beginners to use and make packages (which will be Guix
> compatible by default). And we should not underestimate what beginners
> can do for a language. They might be new to Guile, but possess a lot of
> other traits that would be great, like domain expertise in science,
> writing skills, etc. which would be great for the ecosystem.
>
> Advanced users can use Guix or do the ./configure && make && make
> install dance.

I find using Guix to be much better than the ./configure && make && make stuff. 
The reason is, that I always think: "What, if it doesn't work and I want to 
clean up my system afterwards?". I can't stand it, if any remains of non-working 
stuff is left on the system.

I am fine with using Guix. I like Guix. It is just that making a package is way 
to hard for newcomers. I needed weeks to make one simple pure Guile package, 
because I burned out trying to do it and had to have pauses in between, before I 
could muster new energy to try again. That still haunts me, so that I still have 
not updated my package, even though I have a newer release for months by now. 
Especially the whole (in the end unnecessary) autotools stuff was exhausting. 
Trying to understand what all those files do in my package. It is sort of my own 
problem, because I cannot leave it alone and just be done with it. I want to 
understand it. And then I dive into that rabbit hole and research decades old 
cruft that was automatically added to some autotools files.

-- 
repositories: https://notabug.org/ZelphirKaltstahl