Abjad in GNU Guix

[jgarte]

Hi abjad community,

I wanted to let you know that bonfacekilz and I packaged the main/core abjad suite for GNU Guix:

Bonface and I originally worked on packaging abjad 3.3 and I subsequently upgraded the package to 3.4 and packaged abjad-ext-nauert and abjad-ext-rmakers.

https://issues.guix.gnu.org/50998

A short intro to Guix follows:

• Guix is a lot of things.

• Guix is a universal functional package manager and environment manager.

That is, Guix works across all GNU/Linux distros and is able to install software written in all programming languages. If your language is not supported then Guix can be extended to include a build system tailored to your programming language's build system. Guix is not necessarily a replacement for pip. Instead it wraps pip in a purely functional envronment in which all dependencies can be accounted for and built in a reproducible manner.

• Guix can provision containers and virtual machines.

• Guix is implemented in Guile.

• Guix allows users to declare complete software environments and instantiate them.

• Guix provides profiles, which are like

a kind of universal ‘virtualenv’ that can hold any kind of software whatsoever, not just Python software Furthermore, profiles are self-sufficient: they capture all the runtime dependencies which guarantees that all programs within a profile will always work at any point in time.

The above quote is taken from the Guix cookbook.

If a user would like to start a reproducible software environment with abjad, abjad-ext-nauert, and abjad-ext-rmakers they can run the following command with guix:

guix environment abjad abjad-ext-nauert abjad-ext-rmakers --ad-hoc bpython lilypond timidity++

The above environment also contains end-user software such as a bpython repl, lilypond, and timidity.

The same command but in an isolated container:

guix environment --container abjad abjad-ext-nauert abjad-ext-rmakers --ad-hoc bpython lilypond timidity++

The following command shows how to spawn a container with network access and abjad dependencies.

Additionally, we automatically drop into a bpython repl with a graphical display available on local display 0 for viewing pdfs:

guix environment  --container \
                             --network \
                             --share=/tmp/.X11-unix \
                             abjad \
                             abjad-ext-nauert \
                             abjad-ext-rmakers \
                             --ad-hoc coreutils bpython lilypond evince \
                             -- \
                             env DISPLAY=:0 \
                             bpython

To produce a docker image with abjad and a few packages, including vim and the vim airline plugin a user can do the folllowing:

guix pack --format=docker abjad abjad-ext-nauert abjad-ext-rmakers bpython lilypond evince vim vim-airline

To produce a debian package archive (.deb) the following can be run:

guix pack --format=deb abjad abjad-ext-nauert abjad-ext-rmakers bpython lilypond vim vim-airline

To install abjad and abjad-rmakers to your default profile a user can run the following:

guix install abjad abjad-rmakers

To get package information such as project home page, list of dependencies, etc... about the abjad package a user can run the following:

guix show abjad

To see the guile source code for the abjad guix package definition a user can run the following:

guix edit abjad

To get abjad's package DAG, a user can run the following:

guix graph abjad | dot -Tpdf > dag.pdf

Packages and their dependencies form a graph, specifically a directed acyclic graph (DAG). It can quickly become difficult to have a mental model of the package DAG, so the guix graph command provides a visual representation of the DAG.

Guix offers a nice alternative to virtualenv for linux users.

As of the latest stable debian release, guix can be installed as simply as:

sudo apt install guix

On other linux distros, guix can be installed from the installation script.

Guix is the official package manager of a GNU/Linux distribution called Guix System and is therefore installed by default.

If any abjad user/developer finds the time to test abjad and libraries with guix I would love to hear feedback on the experience and how it compares with using virtualenv.