"Thompson, David" <dthomps...@worcester.edu> skribis: > Many of us in the Guile community, including myself, are not very > interested in language-specific package managers because they are > problematic: > > - They put burden on the user to make sure the right toolchain is > available to build/install things (GCC and co.) > > - They cannot describe the full dependency graph for things that > aren't completely written in that language or use a foreign-function > interface (for example, a Guile library that talks to a C library > via the dynamic FFI, or one that uses the Guile C API) > > - They encourage new users to conflate the build system with the > package manager, leading to software that cannot be built without a > network connection and a specific package manager. Java software is > notorious for this, as are Ruby and Python to a lesser degree. > > That said, I see the desire to have a tool for easily sharing pure > Guile modules.
To complement this, I would say that, despite these limitations, there’s probably room for Guildhall because it addresses the needs of non-GNU/Linux users and GNU/Linux users who cannot run Guix for some reason. That said, we already have a number of Guile packages in Guix, and I would love to see more of them. The fact that Guix can make it easy to work not only with pure Scheme libraries but also with things like the Guile-GNOME stack makes it a very good option. Thanks, Ludo’.
