Re: Idea: a meta language for (language) build systems - npm, Racket, Rust cargo

[Konrad Hinsen <konrad.hinsen@fastmail.net>]

Hi Pjotr,

> Maybe this is a crazy idea:

Not crazy enough for me ;-)

Today's mess with language and platform specific build systems is indeed
a problem, and I have been thinking as well about how Guix could help
with this beyond what it already does. Guix' big achievement, beyond
being a practically useful tool, is demonstrating what it takes to have
a full system build system. Everyone's life would be easier if software
packaging were made more compatible with how Guix (and Nix of course)
work today. And one way to get the rest of the world move towards this
goal would be to help them: propose and implement changes to their build
systems that would make integration with Guix easier.

So...

> My idea is this: rather than generating 'imports' from native build
> packages for every target - which is kinda laborious in its way - we
> could translate an existing Rust/Node/Racket package into an
> intermediate simple package tar ball - call it a sexp-pack ;). This

How about pushing all the other package manager towards producing
sexp-packs, and helping them to get there?

Cheers,
  Konrad