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What's the benefit of Guix compared to tools like Chef (https://www.getchef.com/ https://www.getchef.com/) or Puppet(https://puppetlabs.com/ https://puppetlabs.

What's the benefit of Guix compared to tools like Chef (https://www.getchef.com/ https://www.getchef.com/) or Puppet(https://puppetlabs.com/ https://puppetlabs.com/)?

lsiebert 12y ago
One reason could be that the current version of both Chef and Puppet are licensed under Apache, and this is GPL licensed.
- mat_jack1 12y ago
  That's a good reason, but I don't understand if the use case scenario is the same or different. And if different, in what?
  - lsiebert 12y ago
    This seems to be more like a universal virtualenv than chef or puppet, just the way it's written up.
    - davexunit 12y ago
      You are right, the 'guix environment' utility is a lot like virtualenv. However, Guix also has a system configuration utility.
viraptor 12y ago
Guix seems to be a package manager. Chef/Puppet are configuration management tools. In short (from what I understand, I have only read about guix), you can use all of them to install software. But Chef/Puppet give you much more - distribution of configuration data, runtime search between machines, control over services / resources, etc. In practice you'd probably want to use one of them to install guix and run guix commands locally when setting up the hosts.
- mat_jack1 12y ago
  But then doing that would mean that you split a single system configuration through two different tools, right? I don't think it's ideal in practice.
  - viraptor 12y ago
    I don't think guix does system configuration at all. And I don't mean "what software needs to be installed" configuration. I mean, configuration system that says "this is a staging environment, this app logs at DEBUG level via syslog, syslog gets configured to ship errors/exceptions to XXX, app uses local cache not cluster, credentials get pulled and decrypted from ABC". This kind of configuration goes one level above package management, whether it's guix, apt, yum, pacman, or anything else. Edit: you actually said benefits of guix in the original question - it gives you the way to make a localised installation of something you want. Chef/Puppet cannot be it on their own.
    - davexunit 12y ago
      >I don't think guix does system configuration at all. It does, actually. Check out the documentation for details: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#System-Configuration https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#System-Co...
      - viraptor 12y ago
        Interesting; looks rather limited, but yeah, it's there.
    - sparkie 12y ago
      What Guix and Nix offer over puppet et al is a greater reliability in reproducing an environment - by eliminating the side effects that could lead to errors, or possible configurations and package combinations which have not been tested. The fun part is that configurations can be treated exactly like packages and vice-versa. A "package" can depend on a specific configuration too. After you realize that package management and configuration management are not really disjoint ideas, it's the only sane way to think about reproducing software reliably.
davexunit 12y ago
Guix is a package manager and a GNU/Linux distribution, whereas Chef and Puppet are configuration management systems that work with a number of different distros. So, rather than using Puppet + Debian or something, you would probably just use Guix, because Guix has system configuration tools[0]. Guix (Nix, too) solves system management problems from the bottom, at the systems level. Other tools tack it on top of existing operating systems. [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#System-Configuration https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#System-Co...

What's the benefit of Guix compared to tools like Chef (https://www.getchef.com/ https://www.getchef.com/) or Puppet(https://puppetlabs.com/ https://puppetlabs.com/)?

lsiebert 12y ago

One reason could be that the current version of both Chef and Puppet are licensed under Apache, and this is GPL licensed.

mat_jack1 12y ago
That's a good reason, but I don't understand if the use case scenario is the same or different. And if different, in what?
- lsiebert 12y ago
  This seems to be more like a universal virtualenv than chef or puppet, just the way it's written up.
  - davexunit 12y ago
    You are right, the 'guix environment' utility is a lot like virtualenv. However, Guix also has a system configuration utility.

viraptor 12y ago

Guix seems to be a package manager. Chef/Puppet are configuration management tools. In short (from what I understand, I have only read about guix), you can use all of them to install software. But Chef/Puppet give you much more - distribution of configuration data, runtime search between machines, control over services / resources, etc. In practice you'd probably want to use one of them to install guix and run guix commands locally when setting up the hosts.

mat_jack1 12y ago
But then doing that would mean that you split a single system configuration through two different tools, right? I don't think it's ideal in practice.
- viraptor 12y ago
  I don't think guix does system configuration at all. And I don't mean "what software needs to be installed" configuration. I mean, configuration system that says "this is a staging environment, this app logs at DEBUG level via syslog, syslog gets configured to ship errors/exceptions to XXX, app uses local cache not cluster, credentials get pulled and decrypted from ABC". This kind of configuration goes one level above package management, whether it's guix, apt, yum, pacman, or anything else. Edit: you actually said benefits of guix in the original question - it gives you the way to make a localised installation of something you want. Chef/Puppet cannot be it on their own.
  - davexunit 12y ago
    >I don't think guix does system configuration at all. It does, actually. Check out the documentation for details: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#System-Configuration https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#System-Co...
    - viraptor 12y ago
      Interesting; looks rather limited, but yeah, it's there.
  - sparkie 12y ago
    What Guix and Nix offer over puppet et al is a greater reliability in reproducing an environment - by eliminating the side effects that could lead to errors, or possible configurations and package combinations which have not been tested. The fun part is that configurations can be treated exactly like packages and vice-versa. A "package" can depend on a specific configuration too. After you realize that package management and configuration management are not really disjoint ideas, it's the only sane way to think about reproducing software reliably.

davexunit 12y ago

Guix is a package manager and a GNU/Linux distribution, whereas Chef and Puppet are configuration management systems that work with a number of different distros. So, rather than using Puppet + Debian or something, you would probably just use Guix, because Guix has system configuration tools[0]. Guix (Nix, too) solves system management problems from the bottom, at the systems level. Other tools tack it on top of existing operating systems. [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#System-Configuration https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#System-Co...