Re: Docker and singularity containers

[ludovic.courtes@inria.fr (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hello,

Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public12@thebird.nl> skribis:

> I know this is not a priority right now for maintainers, but I think
> it would be really useful if we provide ready-made containers for
> certain packages. This will allow people who have the infrastructure
> to run containers to start using reproducible Guix builds. With that,
> I think there will be an increased interest in our technology.

FWIW at work people a colleague of mine got into Guix with the goal of
being able to run their software on a different cluster that has
Singularity but not Guix.

People interested in this might use Guix on their laptop just to build
Singularity images and view it as a tool to build bundles (which is of
course unsatisfactory but it’s a way to get started!).

> Maybe it is something to discuss at FOSDEM, but I wonder what it would
> take to have the build farm automatically provide Docker containers
> for marked packages and offer them through the web interface.

A while back we fantasized about the possibility of having a web service
that would produce “packs” of Guix packages on demand.  That may allow
us to be #1 on HN for a couple of hours ;-), but it would also be quite
resource-hungry (and the service itself needs to be written to begin
with.)  Such a service would have to use its own resources IMO, not
those of the build farm, which is already busy enough.

Ludo’.