Re: Guix on macOS

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira <adfeno@hyperbola.info>]

Another thing that just came to my mind is the hard-coding of file name
separators instead of using a combination of checkers to see if the
'file-name-separator-string matches the *target* system (as is briefly
told in `info guile', the GNU Guile Scheme infopage). Although I don't
know if macOS uses "\" or "/". If macOS does use "\", besides having to
make all the attempts to change paths lookup for that separator
evaluation, thus potentially causing extra work, this could require a
major rewrite of package definitions and rebuilds.

Besides, I agree that things should be built entirely with free/libre
software. And I don't know if macOS allows us to do that (thanks to,
along other things, the non-existance of community-oriented copyleft
enforcement by the copyright holders of the XNU/BSD kernel projects).

Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Guix,
>
> I want to get Guix working on macOS.  I recently had a need to do this,
> and I was sad to find that although Nix works on macOS, Guix isn't quite
> there yet.  The manual makes it sound like this should be fairly
> straightforward, and I intend to give it a shot [1].  But before I
> begin, I wanted to know: has anyone done this already?  Is there
> interest?  I've checked the email lists, and I didn't find much
> discussion about this.
>
> I know a lot of developers who use macOS as their primary workstation,
> and most of them use a combination of Homebrew [2] and manual
> installation for package management.  It'd be great if Guix were easy to
> use on macOS!  Not only is it the best package manager (of course! :-)),
> but it would be a great way to encourage the use and growth of free
> software among this group of people.
>
> Additionally, if you're interested in helping out, please let me know.
> To facilitate the work, I'm temporarily renting a Mac from MacStadium
> [3] (it's just a weak little Mac Mini [4] for now), and it would be
> trivial to give interested parties administrative access (via VNC and
> SSH) to facilitate the work.
>
> Footnotes: 
> [1]  info '(guix) Porting'
>
> [2]  https://brew.sh/
>
> [3]  https://www.macstadium.com/
>
> [4]  https://www.macstadium.com/mac-mini/

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