Re: Proposal for a blog contribution on reproducible computations

["Ludovic Courtès" <ludovic.courtes@inria.fr>]

Hello!

Konrad Hinsen <konrad.hinsen@fastmail.net> skribis:

>> Minor comments:
>>
>>   • You write “Build systems are packages as well”.  This could be
>>     slightly misleading: build systems are (1) a set of packages, and
>>     (2) a build procedure.  Dunno if it makes sense to clarify that.
>
> Maybe I got something wrong, but I think I described this as you say
> (please check!). Quote:
>
>   Build systems are pieces of Guile code that are part of Guix. But this
>   Guile code is only a shallow layer orchestrating invocations of other
>   software, such as =gcc= or =make=. And that software is defined by
>   packages.
>
> The build procedure is that "shallow layer orchestrating invocations".
> Does this sound right?

Oh yes, that’s entirely correct!  It’s just the section title that I
thought could be misleading, but maybe not given this explanation.

>>   • Regarding ‘--container’, you write that namespaces “may not be
>>     present on your system, or may be disabled by default”, which is a
>>     bit strong; “may be present on your system, but perhaps disabled by
>>     default” would be more accurate.  :-)
>
> Fixed. I don't know anything about the implementation techniques of
> –container, so I'll blindly write what you say :-)

It relies on “unprivileged user namespaces”, a Linux feature that’s been
around for some time, and is almost always compiled in, but is disabled
by default on some major distros.

Thanks!

Ludo’.