website: Add draft post about the Guile guix-daemon.
* website/drafts/guile-guix-daemon-introduction.md: New file.
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title: Building a Guile guix-daemon
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author: Christopher Baines
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tags:
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date: 2023-10-13 14:30:00
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---
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When using Guix, you might be aware of the
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[daemon](https://guix.gnu.org/en/manual/en/html_node/Setting-Up-the-Daemon.html).
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It runs in the background but it's a key component in Guix. Whenever
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you've been using Guix to operate on the store, whether that's
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building something or downloading some substitutes, it's the daemon
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managing that operation.
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The daemon also is a key part of the history of Guix. The Guix
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project started mixing Guile with ideas from the Nix project, and the
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guix-daemon is a fork of the nix-dameon with some tweaks made over the
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years. Rather than being implemented in Guile though, the daemon is
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implemented in C++. Given the focus on Guile in Guix, this is
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unusual, and I believe it's made working on the daemon less desirable,
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especially since rewriting it in Guile has been discussed for many
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years now.
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# What would a Guile guix-dameon mean?
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Guix already has code written in Guile for doing some of what the
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daemon does internally, so being able to use this Guile code inside
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and outside the daemon would simplify Guix and allow removing the C++
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code.
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There isn't Guile code yet for everything the daemon does though, so
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getting to this point will make new exciting features easier to
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implement. That could be things like making it easier to use Guix in
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environments where running the dameon in the usual way is inconvinient
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or infeasible. It may also help with portability, so help with
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running Guix on the Hurd and new architectures.
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As someone who's more experienced writing Guile than C++, I'm also
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hoping it'll generally make hacking on the dameon more accessible.
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This in turn might lead to new features. For example, I think having
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a Guile guix-daemon will simplify implementing a way to jump in to a
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build and inspect the environment.
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With some [monetary support from NLNet](https://nlnet.nl/project/GuixDaemon-Guile/),
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I'm planning to focus for the next year on getting a Guile
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implementation of the guix-daemon written and adopted.
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# A technical plan
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Building on the [recent discussion](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2023-09/msg00328.html)
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of this topic on the guix-devel mailing list, here's some technical
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thoughts on how I'm approaching this.
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While I think there's a substantial amount of work to do, progress
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towards a Guile guix-daemon has already been made. Given that things
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in Guix have probably changed since this work has happened, I plan to
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carefully review that existing work (most of which can be found on the
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`guile-daemon` branch) so that I can build upon it.
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The priority for the Guile daemon is backwards compatability, so the
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plan is to allow switching between the C++ implementation and Guile
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implementation which any issues. This'll require not making changes
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to the database schema, and generally doing things in a way which the
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current C++ daemon will understand.
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Like the build coordinator, I'm planning to make the daemon a single
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process using Guile Fibers for parallelism. This is in contrast to
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the forking model using by the C++ daemon. Even though it's not a
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priority to address feature issues with the current dameon, this
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approach might help to reduce database contention issues experienced
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with the current daemon, and allow for less locking, like not having
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the big GC lock for example.
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# Progress reports
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I'm planning on publishing more blog posts as the project progress, so
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keep an eye on the Guix blog for future updates.
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#### About GNU Guix
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[GNU Guix](https://guix.gnu.org) is a transactional package manager
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and an advanced distribution of the GNU system that [respects user
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freedom](https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html).
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Guix can be used on top of any system running the Hurd or the Linux
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kernel, or it can be used as a standalone operating system
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distribution for i686, x86_64, ARMv7, AArch64 and POWER9 machines.
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In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports
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transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package
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management, per-user profiles, and garbage collection. When used as a
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standalone GNU/Linux distribution, Guix offers a declarative,
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stateless approach to operating system configuration management. Guix
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is highly customizable and hackable through
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[Guile](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile) programming interfaces and
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extensions to the [Scheme](http://schemers.org) language.
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