Re: VSCode DevContainer for Guix? (Yasuaki Kudo)

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Wed, 12 Jul 2023 at 10:27, wolf <wolf@wolfsden.cz> wrote:

>> Then, it will create a Docker image as an artifact from the CI-run.
>> The image is as small as it can be because Guix only installs the
>> necessary software. 
>
> Careful about this assumption, Guix-generated container images are pretty 
> large
> and include a lot of things you might not want in there (man, info pages, 
> bash,
> ...).  I am not saying "do not use it", but if you try to convince people to 
> use
> Guix for container builds, size should not be your argument (especially since
> Alpine exists as an alternative).

Yes, the images generated by Guix cannot considered as minimal. :-)

Aside bugs – see #63050 [a] for one example of such bug –, as I pointed
in [b],

        The tacit policy with Guix packages is that the packages are usually by
        default “feature maximalist” or specifically named « <foo>-minimal » …

        > Right, and reportedly, Alpine-based images for things like Python are
        > smaller than what we do.  There’s no cheating here: images are
        > self-contained.

        …contrary to Alpine where the packages are usually by default “feature
        minimalist” or specifically named « <foo>-<with-feature> ».

        Consider the package Emacs [1] and give a look at the recipe for the
        package named ’emacs’ [2].  Well, this Alpine package ’emacs’ looks like
        the Guix package named ’emacs-minimal’, and then Alpine provides these
        variants (subpackages):

            emacs-doc
            emacs-gtk3
            emacs-gtk3-nativecomp
            emacs-nox
            emacs-x11
            emacs-x11-nativecomp

        1: <https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/package/edge/community/x86/emacs>
        2: <https://git.alpinelinux.org/aports/tree/community/emacs/APKBUILD>

a: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/issue/63050
b: https://yhetil.org/guix/87v8l1qy0j.fsf@gmail.com

Cheers,
simon