Re: Advantages over Nix?

[Taylan Kammer]

On 26.10.2020 11:41, zimoun wrote:
> The main pitfall is not the Dockerfile per se but the classical
> distribution it often implies.  Well, this video is explaining better
> than my words. :-)
>
> https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/gnu_guix_new_approach_to_software_distribution
Great video!  I love the way Ludo explains things.

> I do not know Nix.  The killer features I cannot work without now are:
>
>   - time-machine
>   - environment (alone, with --pure or --container)
>   - pack -f docker
>   - repl
I think pack -f docker is going to be the "killer feature" in this case.

Well, the following doesn't seem so complicated either actually:

  https://nix.dev/tutorials/building-and-running-docker-images.html

But I really like how 'guix pack' can generate a tarball just as well, 
which could be deployed and tested anywhere...

I'll need to make a few more comparisons.

> > TL;DR: sell Guix (over Nix) to someone who doesn't care about GNU or
> > Scheme?
>
> For reference, Pierre started this [1] and I do not remember the end
> of the story.   IMHO, the nice move is to write down typical use
> cases/scenarii that Guix solves and then the audience can pick the one
> they are interested in or the one that talks to them as an entry
> point.  Therefore, to convince my co-workers, I pick our typical
> workflow, show how it works (or would work) with Guix, pointing out
> what are the current drawbacks of the current workflow and how Guix
> improves the situation or sometimes only one specific part of the
> workflow.  (My co-workers are biologists so they do not care much
> about the computational tools since the one who is doing. ;-))
>
> 1: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2020-01/msg00002.html

That sounds like a sensible approach, thanks for the suggestion!


- Taylan