From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Dave Love Subject: Re: Hacks to install Guix packages without root Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2017 14:19:55 +0000 Message-ID: <877evb762c.fsf@albion.it.manchester.ac.uk> References: <874lqlmvjn.fsf@elephly.net> <87a80dbeln.fsf@gnu.org> <20171027082726.GB8646@thebird.nl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:50302) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e9XOc-0000Ec-Gl for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 31 Oct 2017 10:20:08 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e9XOY-0008Pz-6d for guix-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 31 Oct 2017 10:20:02 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20171027082726.GB8646@thebird.nl> (Pjotr Prins's message of "Fri, 27 Oct 2017 10:27:26 +0200") 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" To: Pjotr Prins Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Pjotr Prins 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.) >> 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). >> > With that we would be one step closer to the user experience of Docker >> > =E2=80=94 without having a runtime dependency on Docker. >>=20 >> It=E2=80=99s also fine to use Docker when it=E2=80=99s available, I thin= k. > > 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.