From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=) Subject: Re: Guix as a Guile package manager Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2016 19:52:12 +0100 Message-ID: <874mema8mb.fsf@gnu.org> References: <5690E261.8000704@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: In-Reply-To: (David Thompson's message of "Sat, 9 Jan 2016 10:30:37 -0500") List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: "Thompson, David" Cc: guix-devel , Fabio Pesari , guile-devel List-Id: guix-devel.gnu.org "Thompson, David" skribis: > Many of us in the Guile community, including myself, are not very > interested in language-specific package managers because they are > problematic: > > - They put burden on the user to make sure the right toolchain is > available to build/install things (GCC and co.) > > - They cannot describe the full dependency graph for things that > aren't completely written in that language or use a foreign-function > interface (for example, a Guile library that talks to a C library > via the dynamic FFI, or one that uses the Guile C API) > > - They encourage new users to conflate the build system with the > package manager, leading to software that cannot be built without a > network connection and a specific package manager. Java software is > notorious for this, as are Ruby and Python to a lesser degree. > > That said, I see the desire to have a tool for easily sharing pure > Guile modules. To complement this, I would say that, despite these limitations, there=E2= =80=99s probably room for Guildhall because it addresses the needs of non-GNU/Linux users and GNU/Linux users who cannot run Guix for some reason. That said, we already have a number of Guile packages in Guix, and I would love to see more of them. The fact that Guix can make it easy to work not only with pure Scheme libraries but also with things like the Guile-GNOME stack makes it a very good option. Thanks, Ludo=E2=80=99.