From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=) Subject: Re: Guix on macOS Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 10:59:16 +0200 Message-ID: <87efq8pwrf.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87bmldavre.fsf@gmail.com> 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]:41190) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e2ZKu-0004lU-Jf for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Oct 2017 04:59:25 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e2ZKr-0001e0-IA for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Oct 2017 04:59:24 -0400 Received: from hera.aquilenet.fr ([141.255.128.1]:59008) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e2ZKr-0001dM-AU for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Oct 2017 04:59:21 -0400 In-Reply-To: <87bmldavre.fsf@gmail.com> (Chris Marusich's message of "Wed, 11 Oct 2017 20:29:57 -0700") 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: Chris Marusich Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Hi Chris, Chris Marusich skribis: > 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. First of all, it=E2=80=99s never been a goal of Guix to run on non-GNU syst= ems. Now, I have nothing against it in principle, as long as (1) this can be achieved in a maintainable way, and (2) the targeted user-land software is free and buildable from source. I suspect macOS fails criterion #2. Back in the day (not sure if that=E2= =80=99s still the case), Nix would bootstrap using the system=E2=80=99s compiler an= d C library (which meant that things were likely to break in subtle ways on macOS upgrades.) As for criterion #1, to me, that pretty much means sticking to the GNU libc. From my experience on Nixpkgs, having to deal with different C libraries is a real burden. It also leads to a situation where you have second-class systems because they use an alternate libc and it=E2=80=99s not uncommon for packages to fail to build against that libc. To put it differently: it=E2=80=99s already difficult enough to have *one* OS working. I=E2=80=99m afraid this is not the answer you were looking for. WDYT? Ludo=E2=80=99.