Guix learning exercices

Guix learning exercices

[Marius via]

Good evening,


I was wondering if there are any exercices online or not, in order to learn Guix in a "practical" way. I've read all the Guix Reference Manual but with the lack of real exercises that challenge me to actually get hands on I fear that I will quickly forget the "theoretical" knowledge. Plus I'm also interested in learning all the small implementation details. I came to Guix because other distros felt to obscure on what was my OS doing, obscurity by "hardcoded" stuff. And Guix does not feel obscure but rather confusing with so much things to deal with. Maybe there is material out there that teaches and exercices Guix development from bot to top or at least some kind of hands on tutorials (like git-tutorial).


Thank you,
Marius.

Re: Guix learning exercices

[Josh Marshall]

Pinging back,

I can second the utility of learning exercises.

On Thu, Nov 21, 2024, 12:12 PM Marius via <help-guix@gnu.org> wrote:

> Good evening,
>
>
> I was wondering if there are any exercices online or not, in order to
> learn Guix in a "practical" way. I've read all the Guix Reference Manual
> but with the lack of real exercises that challenge me to actually get hands
> on I fear that I will quickly forget the "theoretical" knowledge. Plus I'm
> also interested in learning all the small implementation details. I came to
> Guix because other distros felt to obscure on what was my OS doing,
> obscurity by "hardcoded" stuff. And Guix does not feel obscure but rather
> confusing with so much things to deal with. Maybe there is material out
> there that teaches and exercices Guix development from bot to top or at
> least some kind of hands on tutorials (like git-tutorial).
>
>
> Thank you,
> Marius.
>

Re: Guix learning exercices

[Marius via]

Wow, Thank You so much.


For me the most confusing parts are how to deal with the store. How builds are translated into derivations, how derivations are applied. I do not get if G-exp are scheme description of derivations or of builds or in between?


Then the whole bootstrapping process from void is complicated for me, it's like the egg and chicken problem. So in other distros the bootstrapping is precompiled for what I know, and that's it.

But I really want to learn how the bootstrapping is done in Guix the hacker way. I really want to remove the magic veil of low level parts. Below bootstrapping I'm trying to learn how kernel implementations do (I'm learning with XINU OS and beagleboard black). I'm trying to learn by pinching from boths ends. The bootstrapping is like the interface between the two worlds.


Thank you for your hard work and attention.

Best regards,
Marius.


El 21 de noviembre de 2024 17:39:08 UTC, Edouard Klein <edou@rdklein.fr> escribió:
>I'm not aware of anything like this existing, but I am in the process of writing a series of challenges, with the completion of each earning the chanllenger a badge, I will post an email in this thread when this effort pans out.
>
>If you can say more about the kind of things you find confusing, that would be of help.
>
>
>
>Le 21 novembre 2024 18:11:42 GMT+01:00, Marius via <help-guix@gnu.org> a écrit :
>>Good evening,
>>
>>
>>I was wondering if there are any exercices online or not, in order to learn Guix in a "practical" way. I've read all the Guix Reference Manual but with the lack of real exercises that challenge me to actually get hands on I fear that I will quickly forget the "theoretical" knowledge. Plus I'm also interested in learning all the small implementation details. I came to Guix because other distros felt to obscure on what was my OS doing, obscurity by "hardcoded" stuff. And Guix does not feel obscure but rather confusing with so much things to deal with. Maybe there is material out there that teaches and exercices Guix development from bot to top or at least some kind of hands on tutorials (like git-tutorial).
>>
>>
>>Thank you,
>>Marius.

Re: Guix learning exercices

[Marius via]

Oh thank you.

I'll take a look on his channel. I've already installed Guix System by myself a year ago. X220 with libreboot, full disk encryption and everything.

The thing is that I don't feel confident. For example what if I wanted to port a program to Guix I wouldn't now from where to start. Or how do I learn to solve problems by myself. I'm so accustomed to using Debian apt and dpkg and over-bloating my system. With Guix I have the freedom of just having what I need when I need but I do not know how to do that in every situation.


Thank you.

Greetings,
Marius.

El 21 de noviembre de 2024 17:50:25 UTC, Michael Dahlberg <dahlberg+guix@recursoft.org> escribió:
>No practical exercises that I'm aware of, but David Wilson at systemcrafters.net and his youtube site has a lot of fantastic practical information on Guix.  Also, one of the best videos on Guix I've seen was done by Steve George (futurile) and his site has some really good practical information.
>
>My suggestion would be to just dive in and start installing it (get David Wilson's customized ISO) and work through the problems.  When you have problems, ask people here.  They really seem happy to help.
>
>Mike
>
>
>
>
>On Thursday, November 21st, 2024 at 12:11 PM, Marius via <help-guix@gnu.org> wrote:
>
>> 
>> 
>> Good evening,
>> 
>> 
>> I was wondering if there are any exercices online or not, in order to learn Guix in a "practical" way. I've read all the Guix Reference Manual but with the lack of real exercises that challenge me to actually get hands on I fear that I will quickly forget the "theoretical" knowledge. Plus I'm also interested in learning all the small implementation details. I came to Guix because other distros felt to obscure on what was my OS doing, obscurity by "hardcoded" stuff. And Guix does not feel obscure but rather confusing with so much things to deal with. Maybe there is material out there that teaches and exercices Guix development from bot to top or at least some kind of hands on tutorials (like git-tutorial).
>> 
>> 
>> Thank you,
>> Marius.

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Re: Guix learning exercices

[Dev@icepic]

Hey Marius!

I am Guix and scheme newbie myself. I can't provide you with concrete learning materials, just some tips from my journey.

I have learned a ton by working on a real project, namely, I try to port guix to a custom arm32 board using cross compilation. Cross compilation seems to be undersupported, so I stumbled upon multiple bugs, which I tried and partly succeeded to fix. Most of the time I spend reading the guix source code and try to understand what is going on. By doing so I learned a lot about how to write package definition, how to setup dev env using guix shell, how the mail driven development process works and much more. 

Have you considered a similiar approach for you? Maybe you are missing a package where you could provide a package definition. Or you look for a bug on the Issue tracker you could fix? For me getting my hands dirty and working towards a defined goal works best as learning process.

Best regards

Christoph