Re: Could Guix System eventually run on top of HyperbolaBSD ? slightly off topic

[zimoun]

Hi Raghav,

On Wed, 20 Jul 2022 at 12:03, Raghav Gururajan <rg@raghavgururajan.name> wrote:

> [1] The idea isn't off-topic, because, Guix is meant to be kernel 
> agnostic. So exploring HyperbolaBSD as a kernel option for Guix is with 
> in the prospect.

Hum, I do not think that Guix is agnostic about the standard C library.
Therefore, Guix is not meant to be kernel agnostic.

Well, it depends what we name Guix.  From my understanding, the
bootstrap chain is not kernel agnostic.  For instance, what is the size
of the current binary seed on the Hurd kernel?

>From my understanding, Guix is meant to be GNU which means Guix is using
many tools from GNU and these tools are often not kernel agnostic.


> (A) Guix System with GNU userspace and HyperbolaBSD kernel.

Debian folks did that:

   GNU userland packaged with .deb using GLibc
   running on the top of a modified FreeBSD kernel

The project is named Debian/kfreebsd [1] and it is a huge piece of work.
Well, we could imagine reuse their work and replace “Debian packages” by
Guix ones.

But… yes, a strong but!  It is a lot of work as Vagrant explains it [2].
Basically, Guile 3.0 is not working on Debian/kfreebsd so it requires
many patches to have Guile 3.0 running on the top of a BSD kernel.


1: <https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/>
2: <https://yhetil.org/guix/874jzjogbo.fsf@contorta>


> (B) Guix System with HyperbolaBSD userspace and HyperbolaBSD kernel.

It means port Guix to a BSD kernel.  Guix is strongly connected to the
GLibc and a BSD kernel is not using GLibc but another.  Therefore, it
requires to solve many difficult core issues.


On Wed, 20 Jul 2022 at 18:49, Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be> wrote:

> (C) Guix System with HyperbolaBSD userspace (except for GNU C library 
> and compiler) and Linux or Hurd kernel

It means port BSD applications.  For instance, about pf, from Wikipedia
[1]:

        PF has been ported to many other operating systems, however
        there are major differences in capabilities

and even, nothing about kernels other than BSD variants.

1: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PF_(firewall)#Ports>


In all cases (A) or (B) or (C), it is the sort of project that would
take someone highly motivated and highly skilled busy for some time.


Cheers,
simon