January hybrid Guix London meetup

[Arun Isaac <arunisaac@systemreboot.net>]

Hi all,

The next Guix London meetup is scheduled for Monday 15th January, 6 pm
London time (i.e. UTC) onward. Join us in person or online, address and
link below.

- In person, from 6:00 pm: 20 Farringdon St, EC4A 4AB
- Online, from 6:10 pm: https://meet.jit.si/london-guix-meetup
- https://www.meetup.com/guix-london/events/298422197/

If you attend in person, please make sure you RSVP and share your full
name (or a nickname) so that we can register you at the building's
reception.

The main part of the meetup will be an introduction to the guix-forge
project. If you have any Guix or Guile related question or topic, there
should be time to talk about that too. All welcome! Talk abstract
follows.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
# Self-hosting and autonomy using guix-forge

As free software programmers, whether we like it or not, we often host
our projects on large centralized and proprietary software forges such
as GitHub. In theory, it is perfectly possible to host our own forges
using free software such as GitLab, Gitea, etc. But, life is short, and
setup and maintenance of these services is more work than it seems at
first.

GNU Guix is well-known as a package manager, for the high quality of its
packages, and for the strong reproducibility guarantees it
provides. But, it is much less appreciated for its services, system
definitions and deployment features. That's such a shame since these
features can let you summon and dismiss entire systems at will—be they
bare-metal or virtualized—with nothing but a declarative plain text
configuration file.

In this talk, Arun will speak about guix-forge, a Guix channel that
provides Guix services for easy setup and maintenance of a software
forge. guix-forge uses existing free software such as cgit and/or klaus
for serving git repositories on the web, laminar and webhook for
continuous integration, uacme for managing TLS certificates, etc.
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

QA (on guix-forge) and open discussion (on anything Guix related) after
the talk.

Guix London has no official ties with the Guix project. We commit to
promote the project and to always operate with the best intentions; any
mistake that we might make is due to us, Guix London, not the Guix
project.

# Code of conduct

We, Guix London's organisers, intend to create an open, friendly, and
safe environment where people from the most diverse backgrounds can get
together, learn about, teach, and discuss Guix and related topics in a
welcoming and constructive way.

To this end, Guix London adheres to the Guix project's official Code of
Conduct, as published at this link. Please make sure you familiarise
with the document and that you share its principles, before attending
our events.

Should you—at any time before, during, or after one of our events— want
to raise an issue or discuss any CoC-related topic, please do not
hesitate to reach out to the organisers at the contacts below.

- Arun Isaac, arunisaac@systemreboot.net
- Fabio Natali, me@fabionatali.com

# Get involved

Should you be interested in becoming a Guix London organiser, please let
us know. It'd be great to have you onboard. No previous Guix knowledge
is required. If you're interested (or simply want to know more), do not
hesitate to reach out to us!

Similarly, if you want to present on any Guix-related topic at one of
our events, that's also great. We'd love to hear from you.

Cheers!
Arun