From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Pjotr Prins Subject: Re: Hacks to install Guix packages without root Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2017 10:27:26 +0200 Message-ID: <20171027082726.GB8646@thebird.nl> References: <874lqlmvjn.fsf@elephly.net> <87a80dbeln.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:48538) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e8016-0005j8-EW for guix-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 27 Oct 2017 04:29:25 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e8012-0002D6-GO for guix-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 27 Oct 2017 04:29:24 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87a80dbeln.fsf@gnu.org> 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 Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Ludovic =?iso-8859-1?Q?Court=E8s?= Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 05:48:20PM -0700, Ludovic Court=C3=A8s wrote: > Hi! >=20 > Ricardo Wurmus skribis: >=20 > > How about an extension of =E2=80=9Cguix pack=E2=80=9D that will rewri= te the /gnu/store > > references to a user-provided directory before bundling things up in = a > > tarball? >=20 > I=E2=80=99ve thought about this (we have rewriting machinery in (guix b= uild > grafts) that we could adjust and use), but then I thought that maybe > PRoot, unshare, and all the rest are good enough? PRoot is too slow for most HPC purposes but can be used to build non-proot binaries, as I do here: https://gitlab.com/pjotrp/guix-notes/blob/master/GUIX-NO-ROOT.org But it is a roundabout way and too much for most people to handle. Also we are not reusing Guix binaries that way. > The tarballs could include proot-static and another statically-linked > program that essentially tries to call unshare(2). Would that make > sense? proot is a no-go for actual use involving IO. > > With that we would be one step closer to the user experience of Docke= r > > =E2=80=94 without having a runtime dependency on Docker. >=20 > It=E2=80=99s also fine to use Docker when it=E2=80=99s available, I thi= nk. Docker is a no-go on 90% HPC's out there (that number may go down slowly). Also Docker is a royal pain to deal with: every time I have to install it somewhere it gives me some grief. I don't think it is that useful for distributing software. I think if we have a proper replacement for Docker - like Conda does - the need for Docker will actually go away. +1 for providing relocatable packages as far as I am concerned. Pj.