Re: The Hurd, GNU, Guix, and GSoC

[Cyril Roelandt <tipecaml@gmail.com>]

On 03/26/2013 06:24 PM, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Hello!
>
> While browsing
> <http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/community/gsoc/project_ideas.html>, I
> saw references to Stow{,fs}, and an item called “Hurdish Package Manager
> for the GNU System”.
>
> The mission of GNU Guix [0] is to be a package manager for, and
> distribution of, the GNU system.  The distribution only works on
> GNU/Linux currently, but the goal is to support the Hurd (when it has
> source releases...), and possibly kFreeBSD.
>
> Thus, it will most probably have to restrict itself to features provided
> by all three kernels.  However, it could make use of Hurd-specific
> features when running on it, such as unionfs.
>

This makes perfect sense. Since FreeBSD is way more popular than the 
Hurd, maybe students would be more likely to be willing to work on a 
Guix + (k)FreeBSD project. Do we know (k)FreeBSD people who might aslo 
be interested in Guix ? :p

> GSoC-wise, possible projects include:
>
>    • porting the distribution to GNU/Hurd (but again, I’d rather rely on
>      published source tarballs of the Hurd, libc, etc. than on Git
>      checkouts);

What's so wrong with git checkouts ? Are you afraid the code might not 
be very stable ?

>
>    • working on the integration of Guix on the Hurd, via unionfs/stowfs
>      in particular.
>
> WDYT?  Should we update the items in the ideas page to point to Guix?
> Should we add new items?
>

I agree on the whole thing.


Cyril.