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Re: Review of pros and cons of package managers including Guix
From: |
Adam Van Ymeren |
Subject: |
Re: Review of pros and cons of package managers including Guix |
Date: |
Thu, 08 Nov 2018 10:31:46 -0500 |
User-agent: |
K-9 Mail for Android |
On November 8, 2018 4:43:23 AM EST, Thorsten Wilms <address@hidden> wrote:
>On 08/11/2018 10.09, swedebugia wrote:
>>
>> https://www.slant.co/topics/344/~best-linux-package-managers
>>
>> Insights from the Guix-section:
>>
>> 4 pros: (missing the roll-back feature) see link.
>>
>> 1 cons:
>>
>> "Cannot handle filetypes that have different semantics across
>different
>> versions
>> While the functional approach that Guix takes is great for sandboxing
>
>> binary artifacts of packages, it seriously lacks any power in
>handling
>> configuration files or user data. It's difficult to upgrade and
>> downgrade files where semantics and syntax can change between
>versions."
>>
>> Do you agree with this critique?
>
>The whole page is far from a worthwhile comparison, because the "cons"
>and "pros" are all over the place. Characteristics that are listed as
>either for one manager do not appear for all others that have them,
>too.
>
>This specific con could be listed for most, if not all others, too,
>right? Curious, if anyone knows an exception.
>
>The best handling of configuration files I got to know is offered by
>Debian, which, if a package comes with a new configuration file, asks
>what to do about it. Better than nothing, but still not exactly a good
>user experience. There quite simply isn't the right level of
>granularity
>and encoding of intentions given with plain text configuration files.
Guix is in a position to do better than most in this area. I love how most
services in Guix are configured via s-expressions which then generate the
appropriate plain text config from that. Don't have to learn a new syntax for
every service.
It also means that configurations are usable data in the Guix world, allowing
us to automatically upgrade configs to new syntax if a package decides to
change it.