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Re:GNU Guix 0.8 released by lucian1900 on Tuesday November 18, 2014 @09:30AM (#8623945)
Nix (and by extension Guix) are meant to be this solution you're looking for. The problem, as with most unified solutions, is adoption.
Re:GNU Guix 0.8 released by sergiosgc on Tuesday November 18, 2014 @09:33AM (#8623960)
Then that is the very first thing they must state. Instead, the opening line is: "GNU Guix is the functional package manager for the GNU system and a distribution thereof."

In addition, this problem can only be solved by luring established platforms, and this can only be achieved by providing a transition path. It should be able to coexist with other package managers (composer, or pip, or npm or, if shooting for the moon, rpm and deb).

Re:GNU Guix 0.8 released by davexunit on Tuesday November 18, 2014 @10:11AM (#8624121)
Much like how many of us use pip, gem, npm, composer, etc. on our Debian/Red Hat/etc. machines, you can also use Guix in the same way. For example, you are deploying a production web application and Guix had newer versions of some dependencies than your stable host system. You could use Guix to create a profile (a collection of installed packages, a bundle in Ruby terminology) that includes those dependencies for your web application to use.

It's possible to use pip and friends on a Guix system, too.

I personally do all of my Guix hacking on a Debian machine. They play very nicely together.

Re:GNU Guix 0.8 released by _delirium on Tuesday November 18, 2014 @09:53AM (#8624056)
Having multiple system package managers coexisting is pretty thorny. If very carefully delineated so they manage completely independent bits of software installed in their own prefixes, I could see it working (with some careful path management). But if you're actually installing/upgrading system software with it, having some mix of apt, rpm, and guix managing your packages sounds like a recipe for pain.