Re: [PATCH] Add draft post "CRAN, a practical example for being reproducible at large scale using GNU Guix".

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello Lars,

Lars-Dominik Braun <lars@6xq.net> skribis:

>> As mentioned on #guix-hpc, I think it’d be interesting to add a
>> reference to https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01143-6 to
>> illustrate the rationale.  I think it’s important because R users are
>> likely to wonder why they’d bother with Guix in the first place.
> from the article and the quotes in your patch I feel it’s not clear
> the execution failures are the result of mismatched dependencies. Sure,
> if I put on my Guix glasses I would assume they are at least partially
> responsible, but in “Limitations of the Study” they mention they did
> not investigate causes for the failures. So arguing that code quality
> in these open repositories is just terrible – as we can see from the
> automated cleaning step doing wonders – would be equally valid. Or am
> I missing something?

The point I wanted to make is that, instead of going through the hacks
they describe (R version guesswork, source “cleanup”) and yet being
unable to run a large part of the code, we could have a tool that
ensures *by construction* that one is going to be able to rerun the
code.

> You’re right that if the blog post would be published in a non-Guix
> context it would need a good reason to use Guix, but in this case I was
> just describing a cool new toy for people already using Guix. Is that
> mind-set acceptable for posts on hpc.guix.info or do we need a motivating
> section?

The way I see it, we’re trying to reach out to people who’re using R and
are interested in reproducible research.  Their first reaction might be
“this sounds nice, but is it really necessary?”, or: “isn’t renv/packrat
already doing the job?”  Guix fans already know the answers.  :-)

Having said all that, you’re the author of the article, so let us know
whether you want to publish it as-is or to modify it, and we’ll go ahead
(I’ll be on IRC today).  I think it’s already an insightful article!

Thanks,
Ludo’.