Guix size reduction work group

[Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1034 bytes --]

Hi!

At FOSDEM 2020 Ludovic explained to the world why Guix is better than
other container formats (to put it mildly ;p).

Possibly the only counter-argument to "Guix  > Snap / Flatpak" is
the size of the Guix containers.

I also talked to Mathieu who has been working relentlessly on
cross-compilation and embedded device support recently.  He gave a
presentation on Guix vs. Yocto at FOSDEM.  But again, the main
counter-argument is that Yocto allows for much smaller systems.  (I
think Mathieu has some figures.)

Shall we start a work group to fix the issue?

- Write a blog article to explain the issue and a detailed process on
  how to fix it.  (Embed it to the manual.)

- Improve the tooling.  In my experience, guix graph is quickly unusable
  with a high number of nodes.  Maybe d3.js could be leveraged to add a
  filtering system, or a way to click on nodes to hide them and all
  their children.

- How do we compare to Nix?

Other suggestions?

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 487 bytes --]