Re: Review of pros and cons of package managers including Guix

[Thorsten Wilms]

On 08/11/2018 10.09, swedebugia wrote:
> https://www.slant.co/topics/344/~best-linux-package-managers
>
> Insights from the Guix-section:
>
> 4 pros: (missing the roll-back feature) see link.
>
> 1 cons:
>
> "Cannot handle filetypes that have different semantics across different 
> versions
> While the functional approach that Guix takes is great for sandboxing 
> binary artifacts of packages, it seriously lacks any power in handling 
> configuration files or user data. It's difficult to upgrade and 
> downgrade files where semantics and syntax can change between versions."
>
> Do you agree with this critique?

The whole page is far from a worthwhile comparison, because the "cons" 
and "pros" are all over the place. Characteristics that are listed  as 
either for one manager do not appear for all others that have them, too.

This specific con could be listed for most, if not all others, too, 
right? Curious, if anyone knows an exception.

The best handling of configuration files I got to know is offered by 
Debian, which, if a package comes with a new configuration file, asks 
what to do about it. Better than nothing, but still not exactly a good 
user experience. There quite simply isn't the right level of granularity 
and encoding of intentions given with plain text configuration files.


--
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/