From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Andreas Enge Subject: Porting to anything Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:38:58 +0100 Message-ID: <201302210038.58946.andreas@enge.fr> References: <8738yvnslh.fsf@karetnikov.org> <201302202024.22058.andreas@enge.fr> <87a9qyn461.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:50046) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1U8JFp-0007A3-La for bug-guix@gnu.org; Wed, 20 Feb 2013 18:39:16 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1U8JFm-0008W6-P9 for bug-guix@gnu.org; Wed, 20 Feb 2013 18:39:13 -0500 In-Reply-To: <87a9qyn461.fsf@gnu.org> List-Id: Bug reports for GNU Guix List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: bug-guix-bounces+gcggb-bug-guix=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: bug-guix-bounces+gcggb-bug-guix=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Ludovic =?utf-8?q?Court=C3=A8s?= Cc: bug-guix@gnu.org The currently unsatisfying situation, according to "HACKING", is that bootstrapping guix essentially starts by installing (and thus in the worst case porting) nix. I have spent the evening working on a shell script automating the compilation of the bootstrap binaries. Unsurprisingly, I end up reprogramming in shell part of make-bootstrap.scm. (In particular, it cost me some time to understand how to obtain statically linked binaries of the binutils.) And I am only halfway through, and maybe made some errors in the process that will only reveal themselves later. So I wonder whether the dependency on nix is essential in make- bootstrap.scm. Could one not renounce at working in a chroot with defined inputs from nix, and execute the exact same code in the current environment, using the programs available in the current system from the user's path? Then guix could be bootstrapped easily on any gnu/linux system. Andreas