Re: Hacks to install Guix packages without root

[Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public12@thebird.nl>]

On Tue, Oct 31, 2017 at 02:19:55PM +0000, Dave Love wrote:
> Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public12@thebird.nl> writes:
> 
> > 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
> 
> I've never tried to measure it, but how does it affect most HPC
> purposes?  It's not as if they're going to be using a lot of syscalls.
> (However, it's not clear to me how PRoot wins over fakeroot+fakechroot.)

Best to try for the specific use case. For bioinformatics it won't
work.

> >> 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.
> 
> Presumably that depends on the i/o (amount and type, which might just be
> in userspace).

yes

> >> > With that we would be one step closer to the user experience of Docker
> >> > — without having a runtime dependency on Docker.
> >> 
> >> It’s also fine to use Docker when it’s available, I think.
> >
> > Docker is a no-go on 90% HPC's out there (that number may go down
> > slowly).
> 
> [Perhaps not as many as it should be no go...]
> 
> > 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.
> 
> What would a proper replacement do that existing solutions don't?  Also,
> what does Conda provide?  I don't remember seeing anything like that
> with it.

I was not clear. Conda essentially is a light replacement for Docker
if you just think of Docker as a deployment option *only*. Docker 
is overkill for just deploying software. Guix proves that. Conda
proves that too though it is less robust than Guix and less well at
handling dependencies. Both have support for containers thrown in.

In other words, in my area, quite a few people started preferring Conda over
Docker and replacing it in practise. That is what I meant to say.

Docker is not going away, mind. We may end up putting Conda and Guix
in Docker containers ;)

Pj.

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