Back from Guix Days and FOSDEM (Brussels)



Wow, I am still recovering from these intensive days! It was a so enjoyable experience. It energizes for the rest of the year.

Now, it is becoming a tradition: Guix Days runs the days at ICAB before FOSDEM as a fringe event. It was the third time I was there (2019 and 2020). As usual, it was amazing! For sure, it is very helpful to discuss how to tackle current blockers or to draw roadmap or to share skills. To me, the most important part is all the social part around: take the time to meet people and to exchange face to face about various topics.

Among interesting discussions about “Reducing useless module imports” or “How to improve patch review“ or “Quality Assurance” (QA), the one of which I am really happy is about “Release process”. The topic of smoothing the release process is something, in my humble opinion, that would help Guix in various areas as less grafts, less broken packages, better communication reaching more potential users, etc. well, the proposal and its consensus mean having a lot on the plate, great!

FOSDEM, my first come was in 2013, oh 10 years already. This year was the first time I talked in a devroom. Not one but two talks about Guix and Guix-HPC – both Guix applied in scientific context. Preparing two presentations was stressful; I am happy to have made the both but I do not know if I would do again 2 on the same day. Let see which opportunity the future is preparing…

Any feedback about “Guix, toward practical transparent, verifiable and long-term reproducible research” or about “GNU Guix and Open science, a crush?” is very welcome! My English is not as good as I would like so I hope it is understandable enough to make my message clear:

• we, as scientific researchers, must apply the scientific methods to the computational environment.
• today scientific practises always imply data processing thus at least one computational environment is involved in the production of the result.
• a result must be sustainable to have a scientific value.
• Guix can help, at least, Guix paves the way for tools that satisfy the needs of the scientific research in the digital area.

The slides are availble on FOSDEM website.

Last but not least, thanks to the organizers of Open Research Tools and Technology devroom. I really appreciated the atmosphere and all the interactions we had, before, the D day, and after. Thank to Manolis and Pjotr for organizing Declarative and Minimalistic Computing devroom, again, and more, again.

Join the fun, join Guix!