Re: Conda environments and reproducibility

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>]

Hi,

I read this thread with interest—great to have first-hand feedback from
Conda users and packagers who also understand Guix!

Hugo Buddelmeijer <hugo@buddelmeijer.nl> skribis:

> That is, "conda env export" should contain entries like
> "scipy=1.8.0=py39hee8e79c_1", where the hee8e79c should uniquely define the
> dependencies 'that matter', like which compiler is used. What goes into the
> hash seems rather complicated, and grows over time.

I think one source of many problems here is to think that there are
dependencies that do not matter.  Another one, which those hashes appear
to address, is to think that a name/version pair is enough to
unambiguously designate a software artifact.

This hash is a hash of the build result, not a hash of the input, is
that correct?

I think it would be great to have a blog post that walks through
shortcomings and concrete issues one may encounter when trying to
reproduce a software environment with Conda, contrasting it with how
Guix does thing.  This would probably make more sense for people who use
Conda everyday than a high-level overview of Guix.

Thanks,
Ludo’.