Re: Guix / Nix Benchmarks

[Nicolas Graves]

On 2023-06-20 12:45, W. T. Meyer wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Nicolas Graves via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." 
> <guix-devel@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> One of the criticism that can be read online about Guix (compared to
>> Nix) is its speed.
>
> I am using guix as well as nix, and depending on the operation you're
> performing there's not much of a noticeable difference (I usually tend
> to build packages from source, so for most of the build process it
> doesn't really matter what, as in guix or nix, calls the corresponding
> build-system; as that's not too relevant during the build process in
> terms of time relevance).
>
> However, the download speed from the official substitute servers is
> noticeable slower; but that's to be expected considering the resources^1
> NixOS is allocating towards their binary/build caching efforts.
>
>> I have never tried Nix and probably won't in a near
>> future, but I was wondering if some work has been made to compare them
>> on basic tasks (package installation, removal...) (the reason why I ask
>> is to be able to give an honest answer to someone hesitating between
>> both).
>
> I'd personally advise against over-priotizing raw performance of package
> management tasks as a feasible metric to choose a package manager by; as
> having a "good enough" (which is highly subjective) performance should
> be enough. In this context it'd be probably more helpful to have a look
> at nix vs. guix cli tooling and nix as a language vs. guile basing your
> decision upon that.

I fully agree with this statement, over-priotizing raw performance was
not my point, and I won't change myself. I agree with the fact that
having a fair comparison would first require comparing tooling, although
I also think that keeping an eye on performance is not a waste either.

Then the "best" actual comparison might be the one done by Andrew Tropin
a few years ago, right here :
https://gist.github.com/abcdw/e54807b0a25e61fe2cf1bf8991410f83

Maybe we could get in touch with some nix folks to try to update, enrich
and maintain this kind of comparison up-to-date?

(I've seen that some nice reviewing has been done on NixOS by linux
"influencers" during the last week, and would like to also see Guix
benefit from that. Although both are not in competition, a fair and
shared comparison might help Guix grow in the space of Linux
distributions.)

>
> Regards,
>
> Wilko Meyer
>
> [1]: 
> https://discourse.nixos.org/t/the-nixos-foundations-call-to-action-s3-costs-require-community-support/28672

-- 
Best regards,
Nicolas Graves