Guix paper

Guix paper

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

I submitted (just in time!) a paper about Guix for ELS 2013 [1].

  http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/tmp/guix-els2013-submitted.pdf

If it’s accepted it’ll be nice to present it to fellow Lispers there.

Although I’m tired of writing right now, I welcome comments.  :-)

Ludo’.

[1] http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Manuel.Serrano/conferences/els13.html

Re: Guix paper

[Nikita Karetnikov]

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> Although I’m tired of writing right now, I welcome comments.  :-)

Nitpicking:

1. I think that it would be better to move the Background heading to
   the next page.  Here is a possible solution: [1].

2. This document has a lot of hyphenation problems:

     - the word "based" on the second page;
     - the word "bash" on the second figure;
     - (uri "mirror://gnu/hello/hello-2.7.tar.gz") on the fifth page;
     - "origin-" on the sixth page;
     - "parametrize" on the sixth page;
     - "expression->derivation-in-linux-vm" on the seventh page;
     - "corresponding" on the seventh page;
     - "build-bootstrap-guile.-sh" on the eighth page;
     - "build-expression->derivation" on the eighth page;
     - "GNU Guix" on the eighth page.

   Possible solutions:

     - the "microtype" package [2];
     - use a single column instead of two;
     - the "hyphenation" command [3].

3. Use the "hypcap" option [4].

4. Typos:

     - "Two values are turned" (on the third page) should probably
       say: "Two values are returned."
     - "Allows for" (on the sixth page); "for" should be removed.
     - This one: "First, some GNU/Linux" (page 8) lacks the word
       "distributions."
     - "The" is probably missing here: "Ways to achieve this are
       known..."
     - Remove unnecessary spaces (page 10): "Store --- a system..."

5. Non-breaking space: [5].

   Examples:

     - "Figure 4" on the sixth and seventh pages;
     - "Section 3.4" on the ninth page.

6. Maybe it would be better not to use underline on the third figure
   [6].

7. I think that the word "hello" (on the third page) should be
   emphasized with the "texttt" command, not quotation marks.  I also
   think that the comma should go before the closing quotation mark.
   But this rule depends on the dialect.

[1] http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/9576/how-to-avoid-heading-orphan
[2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1609837/latex-breaking-up-too-many-words
[3] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Text_Formatting#Hyphenation
[4] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Labels_and_Cross-referencing#Issues_with_links_to_tables_and_figures_handled_by_hyperref
[5] http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/15547/when-should-i-use-non-breaking-space
[6] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/FAQ#Forget_about_bold_and_underline

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Re: Guix paper

[Ludovic Courtès]

Nikita Karetnikov <nikita@karetnikov.org> skribis:

> Nitpicking:

Thanks for the quick feedback.  I admit I had postponed most the
typographic issues to the final version.  As a Lout user, I was
surprised that LaTeX made so many errors with hyphenations, widows,
etc. by default.

> 1. I think that it would be better to move the Background heading to
>    the next page.  Here is a possible solution: [1].

Doesn’t really work.  I guess it will require manual tweaking.

> 2. This document has a lot of hyphenation problems:

[...]

>      - the "microtype" package [2];

That solves most, but not all problems.  Again, I’ll may have to
manually tweak things for the final version.

>      - use a single column instead of two;

That style is imposed (acmproc.cls).

> 3. Use the "hypcap" option [4].

This had this problem
<http://tug.org/pipermail/texhax/2010-September/015596.html>, but even
then, it broke links.

> 4. Typos:

Fixed.

> 5. Non-breaking space: [5].

Fixed.

> 6. Maybe it would be better not to use underline on the third figure
>    [6].

Fixed.

> 7. I think that the word "hello" (on the third page) should be
>    emphasized with the "texttt" command, not quotation marks.  I also
>    think that the comma should go before the closing quotation mark.
>    But this rule depends on the dialect.

Fixed.

Thanks!

Ludo’.

Re: Guix paper

[Ludovic Courtès]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) skribis:

> I submitted (just in time!) a paper about Guix for ELS 2013 [1].
>
>   http://www.fdn.fr/~lcourtes/tmp/guix-els2013-submitted.pdf

I’m happy to say that the paper was accepted.  :-)

I don’t think I can quote the review, so I’ll paraphrase.  On the
positive side, it says the paper is “easy to read”, that it’s an
interesting topic that applies functional programming to “real life”,
and that the motivations (providing a Scheme API & environment) are
clearly stated.

On the negative side, it notes that the examples are not always
convincing, such as the auto-updater.  The reviewer also considered that
illustrations of how to customize ‘gnu-build-system’ were lacking.

The role of the Nix daemon, and its connection with Guix was considered
unclear.  The reviewer did not understand how dependencies can be
expressed.

I’ll address these comments for the final version, which is due for next
month.

Ludo’.

Re: Guix paper

[Cyril Roelandt]

On 04/11/2013 09:59 PM, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> I’m happy to say that the paper was accepted.:-)

Well done!

Cyril.

Re: Guix paper

[Ludovic Courtès]

I’ve pushed the paper under the new guix/maintenance.git repository [0].
I’m in the process of addressing the various remarks made by the
reviewer, the deadline for the final version being...  tomorrow.

I’ve put the paper under the GFDL.  (I’m not completely sure it’s the
best choice for a paper though, because it exposes factual data about
related work and a statements of a personal vision whose alteration
could lead to a completely different work.)

The slides of my last GHM talk are also there.  That gives raw material
for anyone who’d like to promote Guix in their free software group or
conferences.  ;-)

Ludo’.

[0] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/maintenance.git

Re: Guix paper

[Nikita Karetnikov]

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> I’ve put the paper under the GFDL.  (I’m not completely sure it’s the
> best choice for a paper though, because it exposes factual data about
> related work and a statements of a personal vision whose alteration
> could lead to a completely different work.)

I think it's OK.  Take a look at the "When should a section be
invariant?" [1] paragraph.

Also, one must "preserve the section Entitled 'History'" or "create one
stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given
on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as
stated in the previous sentence." [2]

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-howto.html
[2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html

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Re: Guix paper

[Ludovic Courtès]

Nikita Karetnikov <nikita@karetnikov.org> skribis:

>> I’ve put the paper under the GFDL.  (I’m not completely sure it’s the
>> best choice for a paper though, because it exposes factual data about
>> related work and a statements of a personal vision whose alteration
>> could lead to a completely different work.)
>
> I think it's OK.  Take a look at the "When should a section be
> invariant?" [1] paragraph.

Yes, I know, but I would find it hard to select what to make invariant
(bits of the intro and conclusion? related work?), not to mention that
this could prevent legitimate reuse.

> Also, one must "preserve the section Entitled 'History'" or "create one
> stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given
> on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as
> stated in the previous sentence." [2]

Right, I had overlooked all that.

Well, I guess I’m happy with the current situation then.

Ludo’.

Re: Guix paper

[Nikita Karetnikov]

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> I’ve pushed the paper under the new guix/maintenance.git repository
> [0].

I've spotted some typos.

>       (p [This section describe the functional package management
> paradigm and its implementation in Nix.  It then shows how Guix differs,
> and what the rationale is.])

The word "describe" should be changed to "describes."

>       (p [Our goals when designing Guix was to provide interfaces
> ranging from Nix's low-level primitives such as ,(tt
> [derivation]) to high-level package declarations.

"Our goal" instead of "our goals."

> Input file names are similarly reified through the ,(tt [%build-inputs])
> variable (not shown here.)

Change to "variable (not shown here)."

> As an additional constraint, this extra layer should be efficient in
> space and time: package management tools need to be able to load and
> traverse a distribution consisting in thousands of packages.])

Replace "consisting in" with "consisting of."

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Re: Guix paper

[Ludovic Courtès]

Nikita Karetnikov <nikita@karetnikov.org> skribis:

>> I’ve pushed the paper under the new guix/maintenance.git repository
>> [0].
>
> I've spotted some typos.

All good points, now fixed.  Thank you!

Ludo’.

Re: Guix paper

[Ludovic Courtès]

FTR the final version is in guix/maintenance.git and at
<http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4584>.

Ludo’.