2017-07-14 19:11 GMT+02:00 Jan Nieuwenhuizen <jann...@gnu.org>: > Catonano writes: > > > I read that Jelle and Jan used their own branch in order to have npm > > based software to be installed in their GuixSD environments, as binary > > blobs > > Jelle wrote a nice and clean npm importer, no binary anything. > > Npm packages have the can be source or binary. Depending on how you > want to look at it you can make change this source/binary disctinction > less white/black and turn it into a gray-scale. > > As we are talking about javascript, in some cases source and binary > packages are identical. In other cases, the binary packages come with > preprocessed documentation and lack the sources. Other binary packages > include minimized javascript and even further into the darkness some > binary packages do not include the non-minimized javascript. Then some > binary packages come with pre-compiled binaries and the worst are binary > package that do not come with the C/C++ sources that were used to > compile these binaries. > > In all these cases the binary packages can be built from their source > package. Here is where it starts to get nasty. Building a package from > source can only be done if you have all its dependencies already > installed. In theory that should not be a problem. > > It appears that the npm ecosystem has manouvered itself into a place > where bootstrapping seems impossible: it turns out that any serious > package (notably all npm build system packages) have over 1000 > dependencies, often with cyclic dependencies or even missing packages. > > To break this boostrap loop on Guix I have added a couple of patches > onto Jelle's npm importer branch that implement a --binary flag. This > allows binary npm packages to be installed in Guix and serve as a basis > to build other npm packages from source. > > Apparently have no problem*) adding binary blobs for gcc, haskell (...?) > to Guix. Similarly we could consider adding a/some binary blobs for npm > buildsystem packages to Guix and use those for a basis to build > source-only packages. > > > Can I ask you for instructions about how to do that exactly ? > > git clone https://gitlab.com/janneke/guix.git > > The branch `npm' is rebased on version-0.13.0, have a look at > > guix import npm --help > > and look in gnu/packages/npm.scm for instructions. > > Greetings, > janneke > > *) Actually I do not like this very much and that's why some of us seek > to remove the need for our bootstrap binaries with our stage0 and Mes > projects. >
Thanks. Both for the wrap up and for the instructions.
