GNUnet guys are looking into having the Guix devs provide debs.

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2017-March/011993.html

Understood and thanks for chiming in :)

*e: Just to be sure and to refresh my memory from the email exchanges we had a couple of hundreds of emails ago: this is just about torbrowser, or was there more to it?

That was the main thing I believe. Its true I was exploring a grsec patched libre-linux kernel via Guix too but with recent developments its an obsolete idea (grsec gone private and KSPP mainlining everything).

We are preparing for a major point release so nothing on this front is planned from our side in the short to medium term. We are on the lookout for anything coming from your side whenever you feel like it.

Awesome progress thanks for the updates :) Right, the advantage of Guix is precisely that it doesn't follow FHS. Its worth trying to ask for an exception from upstream no matter how slim the chances - at least there's more of a chance than never asking at all.

Do you know if Gentoo or Arch document their technical implementation of Guix? I would also like your help in writing a proposal outlining the exact details of an exception on Debian that would work for you and Nix potentially. I will focus on Guix because they are Free Software focused but its still good to keep the door open for those who make different choices.

A switch to /opt/ seems like a great compromise that can shut up the FHS zealots. Is this something the Guix guys can do or is it for the adopting distro to handle?

If you would have read the chat content (which I assume you didn't), you would see some insight into the problems and what possible solutions there are.

I actually did. Some of it may be over my head by I'm getting there:) I think if Debian wants to customize Guix to conform to their "standard" they would probably be OK with running their own substitute mirror. Would you see this as a good thing or something that introduces fragmentation?

Sorry if this is taking longer than it should. I want to nail down the fine details and find the best solution before writing a proposal. This way I won't have to edit it and lose mind-share in the process.

@ng0 I wrote a proposal draft. Feel free to improve it before I post:

Hello Dear Debian Coders and Maintainers,

I will propose a process for integrating GNU Guix into Debian and working around potential roadblocks that have made the process difficult in the past.

For those unfamiliar, Guix is a package manager that supports reproducible builds, transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles and more (please see: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Features.html).

It uses Guile scheme to define package structure and system configurations. Its unique self-contained package installation allows it to be used seamlessly on any Linux distro while making sure no conflicts between it and the distro's default package manager arises. As an official GNU project it supports nothing but libre software so it should be compatible with DFSG. Also having Guix in Debian will allow access to more recent versions on software that is developed too rapidly to be otherwise practically usable from the official repos (for example GNUnet).

Potential problems and the way forward:

The fact that the default repo path is /gnu/store conflicts with Debian's strict FHS guidelines. A solution is to mount or patch /gnu/store to use /opt/guix. However this would break use of the official binary buildfarms and would require Debian to host its own independent instance that works with our customized paths.

There are some missing build/runtime dependencies such as guile-git and guile-ssh that would need packaging first but its not possible without more widespread interest:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=850644

A good starting point for a Guix deb package is this latest effort:
https://github.com/detrout/debian-guix

If you have any further suggestions or requests please post them and the Guix people would be interested to collaborate on whatever it takes to realize this.

I hope to kick-start a dialogue/interest in this project so please share your thoughts. Thanks.

Any update?

If there was either,

a) signed deb of guix, or even better
b) a signed deb package repository (reprepro) of guix.

That would allow integrating it into Whonix easily.

Recently a non-controversial way of adding compiled software to Whonix was found:

https://forums.whonix.org/t/policy-for-inclusion-of-compiled-software/6635

Violations of FHS aren't great but acceptable, i.e. guix would be added to Whonix anyhow.