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From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=)
Subject: Re: Use guix to distribute data & reproducible (data) science
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2018 00:42:01 +0100
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In-Reply-To: <24274adb01ba9c928a4701054b686a4a@hypermove.net> (Amirouche
	Boubekki's message of "Fri, 16 Feb 2018 17:43:40 +0100")
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To: Amirouche Boubekki <amirouche@hypermove.net>
Cc: Guix Devel <guix-devel@gnu.org>

Hi Amirouche,

Amirouche Boubekki <amirouche@hypermove.net> skribis:

> On 2018-02-09 18:13, ludovic.courtes@inria.fr wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> Amirouche Boubekki <amirouche@hypermove.net> skribis:
>>
>>> tl;dr: Distribution of data and software seems similar.
>>>        Data is more and more important in software and reproducible
>>>        science. Data science ecosystem lakes resources sharing.
>>>        I think guix can help.
>>
>> I think some of us especially Guix-HPC folks are convinced about the
>> usefulness of Guix as one of the tools in the reproducible science
>> toolchain (that was one of the themes of my FOSDEM talk).  :-)
>>
>> Now, whether Guix is the right tool to distribute data, I don=E2=80=99t =
know.
>> Distributing large amounts of data is a job in itself, and the store
>> isn=E2=80=99t designed for that.  It could quickly become a bottleneck.
>
> What does it mean technically that the store =E2=80=9Cisn't designed for =
that=E2=80=9D?

There are several potential issues.  One is GC: how convenient is it to
have big datasets subject to GC?  Another one is I/O bottleneck: when
adding a file to the store, you currently do an =E2=80=98add-to-store=E2=80=
=99 RPC to
the daemon, pass it the file name, which the daemon then reads entirely
to compute its content hash; could be an issue with big datasets.

HTH,
Ludo=E2=80=99.