Re: GUB

[Carl Sorensen]

On 7/10/18, 1:30 AM, "David Kastrup" <address@hidden> wrote:

    Carl Sorensen <address@hidden> writes:
    
    > Are there any opinions on whether we should pursue a move to Guix?
    
    Wouldn't that mean abandoning Windows?

I haven't looked carefully at GUB for a few years, and even when I did, I 
scarcely advanced beyond the "cargo-cult" stage with it.  I'm copying Jan on 
this email, because he can likely give better answers than I can.

As I understand it, GUB does two things.

1) It makes sure all of the needed packages are present in the appropriate form 
to complete the build
2) I has appropriate build scripts to accomplish the cross-platform build under 
Linux.

The think that Jan thought was the biggest hack about GUB was the package 
manager.  Rather than have an independent, self-maintained GUB package manager, 
we could use Guix.  And we could have a lilypond-build user that would have 
exactly the right versions of all the packages necessary to build lilypond, 
even though other versions are also on the system.

If we used Guix to do the package management, we'd still need to have the build 
scripts.   But I imagine that the build script part is not as challenging as 
the "maintain the appropriate packages" part.

But, as I said, I haven't been in GUB for a few years, so I could be mistaken 
on this.

Thanks,

Carl