From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Konrad Hinsen Subject: Re: Guix on macOS Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2017 15:59:05 +0200 Message-ID: References: <87bmldavre.fsf@gmail.com> <87efq8pwrf.fsf@gnu.org> <87mv4viknx.fsf@gmail.com> <87bmlbp64m.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:60805) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e30UZ-0006cW-Au for guix-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 13 Oct 2017 09:59:12 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e30UW-0004vB-8M for guix-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 13 Oct 2017 09:59:11 -0400 Received: from out4-smtp.messagingengine.com ([66.111.4.28]:33377) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1e30UW-0004qJ-29 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 13 Oct 2017 09:59:08 -0400 In-Reply-To: <87bmlbp64m.fsf@gnu.org> Content-Language: en-US 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: guix-devel@gnu.org On 13/10/2017 14:55, Ludovic Courtès wrote: > If macOS had a similar feature, that’d be perfect: we wouldn’t have > anything to do. Perhaps Docker-for-Mac actually provides something > close to that? I really don’t know. Docker for Mac uses the macOS user-space virtualization facilities (via xhyve: https://github.com/mist64/xhyve) to run a standard Linux kernel. Targeting xhyve is an approach worth exploring in my opinion. It looks feasible to generate all the required files via "guix system", using nothing but tools that are already there. In fact, all it takes is some repackaging because xhyve cannot (yet?) boot from a bootable disk image. Advantage compared to VirtualBox: access to macOS file systems from the guest (which VirtualBox can only achieve via non-free extension code). Advantage compared to qemu: better performance, access to macOS filesystems from the guest. On the other hand, it is not obvious if there is a significant advantage compared to just running Guix in a Docker container (which I haven't tried yet). Konrad.