[Bio-packaging] testing out guix

[Pjotr Prins]

On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 08:35:54PM +1000, Ben Woodcroft wrote:
> OK, will do. FYI I won't be able to keep this rate up, I'm just
> obsessed right now so it makes a nice a hobby, and it is nice to
> finally contribute to a GNU project.

No worries ;). I go on and off myself.

> Do you imagine that we are at a stage where we could import packages
> wholesale in an optimistic fashion e.g. import all the rubygems on
> biogems.info? It might be OK if only most of them work, if they are
> defined in a separate place. For the everyday user who knows nothing
> about guix beyond "guix package -i", a chance of working is better
> than no chance? Certainly this is a departure from the well curated
> packages getting into the main repo (as it should be - I'm not
> suggesting to change that).

We are heading for that - at least in the form of some importer. I
really want to get away from the mess that is rvm/bundler/gems today.

The only thing that stops us right now is C extensions in gems.

It actually was done in Nix (though I think unsupported right now), so
I know it is possible. I just need to get to the Guix knowledge level
that I can hack it.

My own goal with Guix is to have it do the deployments for
Genenetwork.org (which is a rather large bunch of tools now) and
perhaps introduce it into Arvados. I also want Guix to include the
more important Ruby biogems.

Pj.