Hi,
I have been asked to write up an argument for the advantages that GNU Guix
confers for deploying linux software, especially scientific computing and
including bioinformatics software.
To that end I have written up this document
https://github.com/malcook/sce/blob/master/MakingTheCase.org
and I welcome all criticism, suggestions, observations, omissions, flames,
what-have-you. Please feel free to discuss in this thread, via private
email, pull requests, as you see fit.
I hope to incorporate the "good parts" of this discussion back into the
document and welcome anyone to use as they see fit (that would be a nice
outcome!).
I have some notes contrasting GNU Guix with other similar/related tool-sets
(modules, lmod, homebrew, spack, easyBuild, rolling rpms), as well as our
current practices (sort of hybrid of rpms, bastard son of homebrew, and "just
wedge it in there"). However I am not now intent upon setting up such a
contrast, rather, I hope to focus on the advantages of GNU Guix in general.
Some of my comments may be naïve/mis-informed as my experience with guix so far
has been small personal testing deployments, and I have not worked out all the
details of deploying " Using a shared Guix store" as discussed here:
http://guix-devel.gnu.narkive.com/tk2nRunF/using-a-shared-guix-store-was-re-bio-packaging-testing-out-guix
- about which I also welcome further comments, suggestions, and/or warnings.
Thanks,
Malcolm Cook
