Re: Hacks to install Guix packages without root

[Dave Love]

Pjotr Prins <address@hidden> writes:

> PRoot is too slow for most HPC purposes but can be used to build
> non-proot binaries, as I do here:
>
>   https://gitlab.com/pjotrp/guix-notes/blob/master/GUIX-NO-ROOT.org

I've never tried to measure it, but how does it affect most HPC
purposes?  It's not as if they're going to be using a lot of syscalls.
(However, it's not clear to me how PRoot wins over fakeroot+fakechroot.)

>> The tarballs could include proot-static and another statically-linked
>> program that essentially tries to call unshare(2).  Would that make
>> sense?
>
> proot is a no-go for actual use involving IO.

Presumably that depends on the i/o (amount and type, which might just be
in userspace).

>> > With that we would be one step closer to the user experience of Docker
>> > — without having a runtime dependency on Docker.
>> 
>> It’s also fine to use Docker when it’s available, I think.
>
> Docker is a no-go on 90% HPC's out there (that number may go down
> slowly).

[Perhaps not as many as it should be no go...]

> Also Docker is a royal pain to deal with: every time I have
> to install it somewhere it gives me some grief. I don't think it is
> that useful for distributing software.
>
> I think if we have a proper replacement for Docker - like Conda does -
> the need for Docker will actually go away.

What would a proper replacement do that existing solutions don't?  Also,
what does Conda provide?  I don't remember seeing anything like that
with it.