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From: | swedebugia |
Subject: | Re: Review of pros and cons of package managers including Guix |
Date: | Thu, 8 Nov 2018 17:11:20 +0100 |
Hi On 2018-11-08 16:31, Adam Van Ymeren wrote:
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 acrossdifferentversions While the functional approach that Guix takes is great for sandboxing binary artifacts of packages, it seriously lacks any power inhandlingconfiguration files or user data. It's difficult to upgrade and downgrade files where semantics and syntax can change betweenversions."Do you agree with this critique?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.
I totally agree!The Scheme s-expressions was a somewhat steep learning curve but now having passed it and beginning to understand the error messages from the Guile IT IS AWESOME.
1 powerful extension language to rule all the packages and configuration files :D
I keep track of my config.scm with git and it is simple to see the changes over time as I customize and tweak things.
I wish Guix had existed when I started with GNU/Linux 15 years ago. I began with Xandros and then moved on to Debian, Ubuntu and then Parabola.
-- Cheers Swedebugia
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