From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Christopher Allan Webber Subject: Re: Guix on macOS Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2017 15:35:04 -0500 Message-ID: <87sheonlzb.fsf@dustycloud.org> References: <87bmldavre.fsf@gmail.com> <87efq8pwrf.fsf@gnu.org> 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]:37772) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e2kCD-0003qk-AL for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Oct 2017 16:35:10 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e2kCA-0008Nq-77 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 12 Oct 2017 16:35:09 -0400 In-reply-to: <87efq8pwrf.fsf@gnu.org> 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: Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?= Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org Ludovic Court=C3=A8s writes: > 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 qui= te >> 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 = systems. > 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 compile= r and 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 hav= e > second-class systems because they use an alternate libc and it=E2=80=99= s 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 wor= king. > > I=E2=80=99m afraid this is not the answer you were looking for. WDYT? > > Ludo=E2=80=99. Is there a way to maybe run Guix in some sort of namespaced or some variant of "virtualized" or "contained" way that we could recommend for OSX users, without having to bend over backwards to accomodate a different libc and etc? - Chris