[Bio-packaging] Making the case for GNU Guix ... advice sought

[Cook, Malcolm]

Hi,

I have been asked to write up an argument for the advantages that GNU Guix confers for deploying linux software, especially scientific computing and including bioinformatics software.
	
To that end I have written up this document 

	https://github.com/malcook/sce/blob/master/MakingTheCase.org

and I welcome all criticism, suggestions, observations, omissions, flames, what-have-you.    Please feel free to discuss in this thread, via private email, pull requests, as you see fit.   

I hope to incorporate the "good parts" of this discussion back into the document and welcome anyone to use as they see fit (that would be a nice outcome!).

I have some notes contrasting GNU Guix with other similar/related tool-sets (modules, lmod, homebrew, spack, easyBuild, rolling rpms), as well as our current practices (sort of hybrid of rpms, bastard son of homebrew, and "just wedge it in there").  However I am not now intent upon setting up such a contrast, rather, I hope to focus on the advantages of GNU Guix in general.

Some of my comments may be naïve/mis-informed as my experience with guix so far has been small personal testing deployments, and I have not worked out all the details of deploying " Using a shared Guix store" as discussed here: http://guix-devel.gnu.narkive.com/tk2nRunF/using-a-shared-guix-store-was-re-bio-packaging-testing-out-guix - about which I also welcome further comments, suggestions, and/or warnings.

Thanks,

Malcolm Cook