Re:What Is Nix?
by ryukafalz on Wednesday May 20, 2020 @10:53PM
(#23254391)
I can't entirely speak for Nix, but I know they're fairly similar, so: Guix (and I'm pretty sure Nix) have optional binary packages. Realistically most users will use those, but the option to build from source is always there. So, while you say:
>To me, compiling from source is not strictly necessary to get reproduceability guarantees.
...I somewhat agree, but you do of course need to be able to build from source. And, in a system like Nix or Guix, you have an easy way to verify that a build and all its transitive dependencies are reproducible, if you have someone else's build to compare it against. See `guix challenge` for example: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-chall...
>To me, compiling from source is not strictly necessary to get reproduceability guarantees.
...I somewhat agree, but you do of course need to be able to build from source. And, in a system like Nix or Guix, you have an easy way to verify that a build and all its transitive dependencies are reproducible, if you have someone else's build to compare it against. See `guix challenge` for example: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-chall...