[ethagnawl]

> On another front, the Guix project is a major force bringing new users to Scheme, providing an unparalleled foundation for free and reproducible computing.

The Nix/OS folks might take exception. I'm guessing this is tongue-in-cheek but it belies the tone of the rest of the post.

In all seriousness, though, this is exciting from a modern, end-user's vantage point and fascinating from an historical perspective.

[ryukafalz]

It doesn't read as tongue-in-cheek to me. NixOS does not have an equivalent to Guix's full-source bootstrap mentioned in the next sentence: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2023/the-full-source-bootstrap-bui...

Nixpkgs also doesn't seem to require that all packages be built from source - which, if you're really looking for reproducibility, is a downside. I recognize that there are practical reasons for this, and it's part of why Nix has so many more packages available than Guix, but IMO it makes Guix a better foundation to build on if you want as much of your system as possible to be reproducible.

[Y_Y]

There is also the "secret" nonguix channel which packages nonfree things for Guix: https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix

It's a funny problem but because it's antithetical to the original project's spirit you won't hear about it from any official Guix sources and so it's relatively unknown.

[sham1]

Nonfree software is a major part of nonguix, both because of the ethical problems which are the raisons d'être of the GNU project, there's also the more practical consequence drom the nonfree nature, that you can't bootstrap the binaries any you can't know their provinence beyond "it's from the vendor".

However just to clarify for others, it's not the only thing there of course. There is free software in nonguix, maybe because it's PITA to bootstrap, like for example Leinigen and other parts of the Clojure ecosystem, as well as everything and anything written using Electron. And of course notable free software things there are also the blobbed Linux kernel (probably obvious reasons), as well as Firefox, since Mozilla has some interesting trademark opinions, so you can't have it on the main Guix channel.

[ryukafalz]

I wouldn't say it's relatively unknown, I see it come up just about every time Guix comes up in discussions here. And I'm glad nonguix exists, for what it's worth.

But it's helpful to have Guix itself aim for reproducibility even if nonguix exists, so you can install upstream Guix alone if you're looking for reproducibility.

[rssoconnor]

> Nixpkgs also doesn't seem to require that all packages be built from source - which, if you're really looking for reproducibility, is a downside.

Does Guix not have GHC (Glasgow Haskell Compiler) or did it somehow bootstrap GHC? Last time I checked bootstrapping GHC on today's hardware is effectively an unsolved problem. [1]

> NixOS does not have an equivalent to Guix's full-source bootstrap

While you are not wrong, there is nothing fundamentally stopping Nixpkgs from being bootstrapped in a similar way to Guix. emilytrau has already done a lot of the work. [2]

[1] https://elephly.net/posts/2017-01-09-bootstrapping-haskell-p... [2] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/227914

[ryukafalz]

> Does Guix not have GHC (Glasgow Haskell Compiler) or did it somehow bootstrap GHC? Last time I checked bootstrapping GHC on today's hardware is effectively an unsolved problem.

I think you're right, it looks like they've gotten a little further now than in that post but there's still a gap in the bootstrap chain. So maybe not every package is fully bootstrapped, but they do seem to take it more seriously.

> While you are not wrong, there is nothing fundamentally stopping Nixpkgs from being bootstrapped in a similar way to Guix. emilytrau has already done a lot of the work.

Yes, I agree, and I hope they get there! I just also think that acknowledging the places where Guix is currently ahead isn't wrong. Nix isn't the only game in town anymore.

[rssoconnor]

> it looks like they've gotten a little further now than in that post

Can you say more, or provide any references? I would be interested in the state of the art here.

[ryukafalz]

There's a comment in the Guix source (added by the author of that first post you linked, Ricardo Wurmus) that seems to indicate that they found a way around the segfault problem described in the post by using a registerised version of GHC: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages...

I had to look up exactly what this means, not being very familiar with the Haskell ecosystem myself. It looks like it's not the raw source form and is architecture-specific, but it's also not the compiled binary form. So that's not perfect, but better than relying on the compiled binaries I guess. (Unfortunate for me since my laptop is ARM and I'd like to be able to use git-annex, haha.) But this seems to work for older versions of GHC.

This post by Simon Tournier from last year describes the current situation near the bottom, and from what I can tell this is still correct: https://simon.tournier.info/posts/2023-10-01-bootstrapping.h...

> The bootstrapping problem for Haskell is not solved. And Ricardo works hard on it. Currently, from the older GHC around (4.08.2), which relies on gcc-2.95 – part of the Bootstrapping story above – it is possible to chain until version 6.10.4. Then versions 6.12.3 and 7.4.2 are not packaged yet for completing the Haskell chain from version 4.08.2 to modern version as 9.2.5; fully connecting the dots with bootstrap-seeds and dropping these 450MiB of binaries. The solution of this chicken-or-the-egg is not yet complete.

[rekado]

The technical details of the quote are correct, but FWIW I'm no longer working on the GHC bootstrap. It's fun for a while but the lack of interest in the Haskell community and the general high level of ridicule and hostility from the rest of the software world towards all things GNU / free software / bootstrapping have kinda turned me off the whole computer thing.

[rekado]

I've built up to GHC 6 (I've stopped after reaching 6) from GHC 4. GHC 4 does use some generated C files, so it's not a pure bootstrap, but it's still much better than taking a binary of GHC 6 or later.

(I'm the author of the 2017 blog post. I had planned a follow-up but since I didn't have much to show I scrapped it.)

[rssoconnor]

Is this committed to Guix and/or otherwise available somewhere?

[rekado]

It's part of Guix. It starts here: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages...

[3836293648]

Nix doesn't require everything to be built from source, sure, but everything downloaded must match a provided hash. What's the difference between downloading source code and binaries at that point?

[ryukafalz]

It's easier to audit source code than binaries, and easier to audit it once than once for each architecture.

[3836293648]

Auditing is irrelevant to whether or not it's reproducable, which was the question here.

You also forgo any improvements to compiler improvements