Guix has made it into Debian Unstable! This means Debian users can use Guix as a "userspace" package manager now! https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/guix
This is really wonderful! Debian and Guix both care deeply about reproducibility.
This could be a big win for user freedom on both (cotd ...)
Many important otherwise-FOSS applications are only available via black-box containers assembled from a mess of incompatible specific-language package managers. This is terrible.
However, Guix can be used to set up dev environments which *are* reproducible in userspace (cotd...)
For a long time this disconnect happened b/c distros that care about buildability/reproducibility were *disconnected* from new dev environments, which were done in userspace package managers.
But Guix comes with something like a universal virtualenv: "guix environment"! (cotd..)
Lots of people have good reason to run Debian. But now they can use Guix for dev, too!
And what is packageable for Guix tends to be packageable for Debian and vice versa.
Thus this could be a path out from one of the biggest problems user freedom faces: unbuildable software.
tl;dr: Ship every FOSS project with a "guix.scm" file.
These can be used to set up dev environments with
"guix environment -l guix.scm"
Projects built using Guix as a dev environment are free from the "binary-black-box-container-only" plague, healthier for user freedom!
🇳🇱
@cwebber I love the idea of Guix and I came really close to using it. Honestly though when I heard that none foss orijects would be strictly forbidden from inclusion from their package manager, however, I dropped the whole idea. I do recognize that 3rd parties can of course maintain their own repositories for that, but it concerns me as I doubt the tools will be there to make that easy and I highly doubt there will be well maintained repositories of that type.
I still love the idea of Guix though and maybe ill get lucky and someone will fork it who is a bit more liberal in those regards.
I also think its a good reason not to include a guix file, as it locks you into an ecosystem that is committed to certain limitations up front.
Well if that is your expiernce I'm willing to give it a second look and try it out. Thanks for that!
@freemo @cwebber hey there! Some info you might find helpful. The tools for independently hosting your own Guix packages and extensions get lots of love and there are already a number of well-maintained outside forks, including mine. Forking Guix is easy. I wrote recently about how its design intentionally frees users from dependence on upstream maintainers and provide an inclusive mechanism for all business models & licenses: https://www.ryanprior.com/posts/what-is-guix-really/#headline-10