From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Konrad Hinsen Subject: Reproducible environments Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2015 12:50:52 +0200 Message-ID: <22035.42892.444833.212704@Konrad-Hinsens-MacBook-Pro-2.local> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:39870) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZjPq9-0001eU-9w for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 06 Oct 2015 06:51:29 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZjPq4-0006ni-2D for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 06 Oct 2015 06:51:25 -0400 Received: from out4-smtp.messagingengine.com ([66.111.4.28]:39112) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZjPq3-0006ls-Pl for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 06 Oct 2015 06:51:19 -0400 Received: from compute5.internal (compute5.nyi.internal [10.202.2.45]) by mailout.nyi.internal (Postfix) with ESMTP id 136CE20609 for ; Tue, 6 Oct 2015 06:51:18 -0400 (EDT) List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: guix-devel@gnu.org Hi everyone, I am exploring the use of Guix for reproducible environments in scientific computing. My goals are very similar to those described in the paper "Reproducible and User-Controlled Software Environments in HPC with Guix". Section 4.1 of that paper says that a given environment, defined by a Guix profile, can be reproduced given (1) a manifest and (2) the Guix commit defining all the packages. Problem #1: After reading the manual twice, I still don't see how I can tell "guix package" to use a given Guix commit. Problem #2: What if my profile contains packages from several Guix commits (typically for getting specific older versions)? Or if it contains packages defined outside of the Guix distribution, in Guile modules on GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH? If my understanding of Guix is correct, all the required information for rebuilding everything identically is available at a lower level, in the derivation files. Would it be feasible to collect all the derivation files underlying a profile in a tar archive, and then have them rebuilt and added to a fresh profile in an automatized way? Konrad.