Getting rid of build tools

From: Pjotr Prins Subject: Getting rid of build tools Date: Sun, 27 Dec 2015 09:23:20 +0100 User-agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)

Hi all, 2015 was a good year for GNU Guix - Guix has made immense progress. Some thoughts for 2016: I am a software developer by trade and for years I have struggled with build systems, such as configure/automake, cmake, Ruby RVM/bundler, Python virtualenv etc. etc. You probably know I have already ditched RVM/bundler and virtualenv for GNU Guix which is great :) Recently it dawned on me that for programming with GNU Guix there is no longer a need for configure/automake and cmake either! These tools really try to address the problem of targetting different (posix) build environments. If I only target GNU Guix I think a simple make will do again because there are only a few final targets (test, debug, install) and GNU Guix resolves all dependencies. This greatly simplifies the task of the software developer. I am not going to let tears over losing these complex build tools. And being a Linux guy I am happy to only target Linux. The different virtualization solutions make deployments on different systems quite easy anyway and trivial with Guix because it comes with all dependencies. Even so, my prediction is that eventually other systems will be targeted too. Even though there currently is not much GNU Guix initiative outside Linux/Hurd I think people will start working on other ports. The Guix/Nix back-end already runs on the BSDs, for example. So, it is mostly a matter of adapting the Guix front-end. Happy hacking in 2016 :) Pj.

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