this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Using Scheme instead of a purely functional language like Nix as the Nix/Guix expression language is a bold choice I am not sure I agree with.
Scheme is the most functional of all non-purely-functional languages that I know of. What's more, the parts of Guix in which packages are defined are quite pure, even using monads for some things, so it is really not too different from the Nix language.
So I guess they just wanted to use an established language?
Guile Scheme is the official extensions language for the GNU Project. Guile and Guix's history often intersect as Guix is seen as the shining poster child of Guile and contributes to a lot of Guile's development.
When you say "Scheme" you should also refer to what type of Scheme you're referring to as there are multiple with different feature sets/goals.
TIL.
Monads have nothing to do with purity. In fact, one of the most infamous usages of them is Haskell's IO monad which is probably the most impure construct in the entire language.
Hm, I can't help but think that a lisp dialect can never really be similar to any language except another lisp.
No, monadic interface is used to programmatically access the store instead of being used to define packages. Packages are pure in Guix.
It's actually easier this way because you keep everything in one place.
I edited some file on Ubuntu to merge my audio channels into one because one of my speakers broke. Do you think I know what change I made to what file now? When I update, do you think I can merge my changes with the new file and make everything work? Of course not, I am several years into forgetting what I did
But
configuration.nixis one file, I usually get a deprecation notice for some stuff and just change a line here and there from time to time. All of my changes are in there and they are in git. When I switched to flakes I also addedflake.nixin there, but it's still just two files in one folder I play around with. Not only that, but the maintainers already gave me the options I need for my services. I don't have to follow some guide online to set something up, I just enable it and it works immediately.For example, enabling
iwdis:I just did that and it worked. I commented it out and it went back to whatever the default package is. Is this as easy to toggle back and forth in other distros?
Guix uses Guile everywhere. Nix uses string interpolated Bash and Perl for anything impure.
Now what do you think?