Why does Guix have so much in-tree functionality?

Why does Guix have so much in-tree functionality?

[Kai Jellinghaus]

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Hello all, I've been fiddling with Guix for about two days, and have
managed to make some first modifications.
I'm wondering why Guix has so much built-in functionality? I don't really
see the benefit of having this large number of packages in-tree. Similarly,
machine configs, bootloaders, build systems, and some image configurations
are all kept in-tree, part of every guix build.
I'm not clear on what the reasoning is? I'd highly appreciate some help
here.
I think being able to hack guix is very fun and once I get the hang of it a
bit better still, I can even see it being very useful for all sorts of
things. But it requires modifying, building and ultimately shipping this
large, complicated repository.
Of course channels exist, but they are additive only, while a large number
of packages already exist in-tree. And either the build system of the
package is supported, or it's a huge pain.

For bootloaders the image configuration I'm totally lost.

I've tried my hand at reducing guix to only the absolutely necessary parts,
but it's very hard with packages like `base` and `admin`, and of course I
don't have the knowledge (yet) to know what exactly is critical to
functionality and what is just "nice to have".

Anyways, I'd really appreciate it if someone that has more experience and
might even know the history of how these things came to be would help me
out! :)

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Re: Why does Guix have so much in-tree functionality?

[Leo Famulari]

The idea is that it eases development because we don't have to maintain
a versioned API between the core functionality and the packages,
services, etc.

It's similar to how everything is developed together in the Linux kernel.

Also, it encourages people who are developing add-ons to Guix to
contribute their code to Guix itself, which is beneficial for all Guix
users and helps grow the Guix community and keep it cohesive.

Again, similar to the kernel.

Re: Why does Guix have so much in-tree functionality?

[Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi Kai,

On Mon, Jul 22 2024, Kai Jellinghaus wrote:

> I'm wondering why Guix has so much built-in functionality?

Tongue-in-cheek, because "Guix strives to bring the Emacs philosophy to
the operating system." [1]

Kind regards
Felix

[1] Sorry, I can't find the quote right now.