Is guix the right tool to get package definitions?

Is guix the right tool to get package definitions?

[Adam]

Hi guix!
Recently I used nixos on one of my machines. And I noticed people
there use tar balls for fetching package definitions. And It worked
much faster for me.
That was surprising and I decided to write this letter.
Is git the right tool for getting new package definitions? What if git
commits history will become enormous?
As I see, the first guix pull is running too long for a lot of people.
Probably, there are ways to cache all of this.
Anyway, I'm just curious about it. If there are already answers for my
question, I would like to read them.

Re: Is guix the right tool to get package definitions?

[Felix Lechner via]

Hi Adam,

On Mon, Apr 22 2024, Adam wrote:

> Anyway, I'm just curious about it. If there are already answers for my
> question, I would like to read them.

I am not familiar with the tarballs Nix uses to deliver updates of
package definitions.  Their repo is probably bigger than Guix.  Here, we
use 'guix pull' together with channel definitions.

Is there a chance you might rephrase your question for a better answer,
please?

Kind regards
Felix

Fwd: Is guix the right tool to get package definitions?

[Adam]

forgot to cc to help guix

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Adam <adam.quandour@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: Is guix the right tool to get package definitions?
To: Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com>


Sure, so my concern is - will it be difficult to guix pull new package
definitions when git commit history of guix channel will become
enormous? Is there any way to cache git commit history? Or maybe there
are other ways to achieve this?

On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 11:40 AM Felix Lechner
<felix.lechner@lease-up.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Adam,
>
> On Mon, Apr 22 2024, Adam wrote:
>
> > Anyway, I'm just curious about it. If there are already answers for my
> > question, I would like to read them.
>
> I am not familiar with the tarballs Nix uses to deliver updates of
> package definitions.  Their repo is probably bigger than Guix.  Here, we
> use 'guix pull' together with channel definitions.
>
> Is there a chance you might rephrase your question for a better answer,
> please?
>
> Kind regards
> Felix

Re: Fwd: Is guix the right tool to get package definitions?

[Tomas Volf]

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On 2024-04-22 15:34:38 -0700, Adam wrote:
> forgot to cc to help guix
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: Adam <adam.quandour@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 1:56 PM
> Subject: Re: Is guix the right tool to get package definitions?
> To: Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com>
>
>
> Sure, so my concern is - will it be difficult to guix pull new package
> definitions when git commit history of guix channel will become
> enormous? Is there any way to cache git commit history? Or maybe there
> are other ways to achieve this?

The git repository with packages is cached, in ~/.cache/guix/checkouts I
believe.  So after the initial guix pull, subsequent invocations do not spent
much time on the git pull part.

>
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 11:40 AM Felix Lechner
> <felix.lechner@lease-up.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Adam,
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 22 2024, Adam wrote:
> >
> > > Anyway, I'm just curious about it. If there are already answers for my
> > > question, I would like to read them.
> >
> > I am not familiar with the tarballs Nix uses to deliver updates of
> > package definitions.  Their repo is probably bigger than Guix.  Here, we
> > use 'guix pull' together with channel definitions.
> >
> > Is there a chance you might rephrase your question for a better answer,
> > please?
> >
> > Kind regards
> > Felix
>

--
There are only two hard things in Computer Science:
cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.

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