Re: Guix / Nix Benchmarks

["W. T. Meyer" <w@wmeyer.eu>]

Hi,

Nicolas Graves via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." <guix-devel@gnu.org> writes:

> One of the criticism that can be read online about Guix (compared to
> Nix) is its speed.

I am using guix as well as nix, and depending on the operation you're
performing there's not much of a noticeable difference (I usually tend
to build packages from source, so for most of the build process it
doesn't really matter what, as in guix or nix, calls the corresponding
build-system; as that's not too relevant during the build process in
terms of time relevance).

However, the download speed from the official substitute servers is
noticeable slower; but that's to be expected considering the resources^1
NixOS is allocating towards their binary/build caching efforts.

> I have never tried Nix and probably won't in a near
> future, but I was wondering if some work has been made to compare them
> on basic tasks (package installation, removal...) (the reason why I ask
> is to be able to give an honest answer to someone hesitating between
> both).

I'd personally advise against over-priotizing raw performance of package
management tasks as a feasible metric to choose a package manager by; as
having a "good enough" (which is highly subjective) performance should
be enough. In this context it'd be probably more helpful to have a look
at nix vs. guix cli tooling and nix as a language vs. guile basing your
decision upon that.

Regards,

Wilko Meyer

[1]: https://discourse.nixos.org/t/the-nixos-foundations-call-to-action-s3-costs-require-community-support/28672