[Bio-packaging] testing out guix

[Pjotr Prins]

Hi Ben,

On Mon, Jun 08, 2015 at 04:05:50PM +1000, Ben Woodcroft wrote:
> Based on discussions from this list I thought I might give it a
> spin, but ran into a few problems (on 0.8.2). Specifically, I was
> unable to get a "hello world" package of my own making to work,
> presumably because of my own ignorance. Maybe someone can help me
> out. Seeing as package files seem quite straightforward to write,
> I'm hoping it won't be too much effort to write one for each piece
> of software that we publish.

We can help, I am sure.

> I tried to follow the instructions at
> https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#Defining-Packages
> 
> but it is unclear what to do with the 'recipe' once created. Where
> do I put it? What is a good name for a recipe file? How do I
> test/install it? It would be great to have a blog post that steps
> through the process of creating a new package to follow.

I wrote some up while I was creating the first Ruby support:

https://github.com/pjotrp/guix-notes/blob/master/HACKING

Easiest is to check out the guix tree and run your new package from
there following 

https://github.com/pjotrp/guix-notes/blob/master/INSTALL

> Some other problems/notes - Apologies for being wide-ranging.
> * OSX support seems like it would be very pertinent for
> bioinformaticians, does/will guix support?

Nix has OSX support, and there is also little in Guix that can not be
ported to OSX (GNU Guix has multiple targets and even supports the
Hurd!). I expect someone will do it. The project is only gaining
momentum, so once someone competent has the itch to scratch...

> * Installing from gnu hydra is way slow on the underside of the
> planet, I'm getting DL speeds of 70KB/s. There's no mirrors?

We need to create mirrors. I don't think it is hard to do. Ricardo,
what do you think?

Pj.