Ludovic Courtès

https://toot.aquilenet.fr/@civodul

GNU, Guix, Guile, reproducible research, etc.

Email: [email protected]
OpenPGP: 3CE4 6455 8A84 FDC6 9DB4 0CFB 090B 1199 3D9A EBB5
Lingvoj: fr en eo es ca
Web: https://people.bordeaux.inria.fr/lcourtes/

Public Key

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NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsg7mc0mcnf6uptwdjdv7r70jzk5j9ewv0zf9mg5cqar040hea2k9qprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntrn7l2k

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relay.momostr.pink

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npub13ahslh3xn4czkumy6eu8uly9dfytjuc7yjtk3fsp6xl2l0n64v2q5d4c8l

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Last Notes

2026-06-05 08:21:24 GMT

Just discovered “Principia Softwarica”:
https://principia-softwarica.org/
It’s inspiring both as a piece of work—one person learning and documenting an entire OS code base over several years!—and as a demonstration of what designing software with consistency, clarity, and minimalism in mind can produce.
(HT @npub19g6…h7x9 !)

2026-04-23 12:27:20 GMT

Well-documented list of free software projects and their use of genAI:
https://codeberg.org/small-hack/open-slopware
It’s already a long list that shows what looks like uncritical adoption, both by high-profile projects (systemd, VLC, etc.) and by niche projects (GNU Mach is a prime example).

2026-04-07 21:51:23 GMT

“It may constitute a threat to commit genocide” says Amnesty:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/04/iran-president-trumps-apocalyptic-threats-of-large-scale-civilian-devastation-demand-urgent-global-action-to-prevent-atrocity-crimes/
Drop “may”? It’s unambiguous, and so was Gallant’s speech on Oct. 9th, 2023.

2026-04-04 16:33:15 GMT

Hey #Guix people! If you haven’t done so already, check out the proposed update of the deprecation policy by @npub16vn…387d and @npub18tl…eehj 👇
https://codeberg.org/guix/guix-consensus-documents/pulls/12
How changes in Guix proper are handled has a huge impact on whether/when/how your code (config, manifests, channels, etc.) might break.
Make your voice heard!

2026-02-25 17:49:14 GMT

GenAI reaches another unexpected corner of #FreeSoftware: the #Hurd
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-hurd/2026-02/msg00133.html

2026-02-11 14:09:06 GMT

Browse documentation online ✨ like never before ✨ with the #Guix Documentation Center!
https://doc.guix.gnu.org/

2025-12-24 09:54:36 GMT

Anyone knows how to contact the fine people behind notabug.org?
There’s quite a few Guix/Guile-adjacent projects there that we should probably migrate to Codeberg, but we can’t do that properly without their help (adding Codeberg IPs to an allow-list on their side would be enough).
#NotABug #Codeberg

2025-12-21 16:56:13 GMT

@npub19tf…rcxc added two new publications on #ReproducibleResearch on the #Guix publication page 👇
https://guix.gnu.org/en/publications/
① A just-published paper showing container image generation for materials science;
② A 2024 survey on #reproducibility in #HPC.
#OpenScience

2025-11-28 13:51:59 GMT

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This was made possible by cleaning up the mess, turning off/reducing email notifications from forges, but most importantly, this is because mu4e provides fast access to email.
With Gnus, I was often abusing the “unread” flag to make it easier to find messages I planned to reply to as well as patches/bugs I meant to process…

2025-11-28 13:47:16 GMT

For the first time in many years, I have less than 10 unread emails. 🎉
When I moved to #mu4e seven months ago, I was at 20,000!
https://toot.aquilenet.fr/@civodul/114313643178812888
https://toot.aquilenet.fr/system/media_attachments/files/115/627/625/721/179/316/original/4101eb9b890ca910.png

2025-11-03 15:15:56 GMT

Folks starting to realize that “open source” does, indeed, “miss the point” (to paraphrase rms), and that copyleft exists for a reason:
https://paragraph.com/@holonic-horizons/the-stallman-paradox-how-web3-became-the-ultimate-open-source-theater

2025-10-09 20:43:38 GMT

Exciting times in #Guix land: a new “Commercial Support” page has landed 👇
https://guix.gnu.org/commercial/
What’s truly exciting is that it lists only individuals and worker cooperatives. There’s currently four of them, all with a great track record! And most of these amazing people are on the Fediverse! 🤯

2025-09-14 15:38:21 GMT

#Fibers 1.4.1 is out, fixing an embarrassing regression introduced in 1.4.0:
https://codeberg.org/fibers/fibers/releases
… and we’re still looking for a (co-)maintainer. Don’t be shy, make yourself known!

2025-08-21 08:56:03 GMT

Just stumbled upon this report from the #reproducibility in #HPC workshop that took place before #SC25 👇
https://zenodo.org/records/15306610
It is disappointing in some ways, but it’s great to see this topic being discussed—putting “reproducibility” and “HPC” together was unthinkable just a few years ago!
🧵

2025-07-06 20:29:36 GMT

I’ve been a happy #Codeberg “supporting member” (no voting rights) for a couple of weeks now!
https://join.codeberg.org/
The overall organization and structure and the quality of the org/policy discussions I’ve seen so far are inspiring. It’s quite something to have cooperative decision-making at this scale (800+ members, though many without voting rights.) 👍

2025-05-25 15:17:34 GMT

#Guix migration to #Codeberg complete! 🎉
https://git.guix.gnu.org/guix

2025-05-16 11:18:45 GMT

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That’s what you see under https://codeberg.org/user/settings/storage_overview, right? Mine says 1 GiB.
The clone at https://codeberg.org/guix/guix-mirror takes ~600 MiB currently, which should leave 150 MiB per user (not a lot).
See also https://codeberg.org/Codeberg-e.V./requests/issues/784.
@npub1fh7…ee83

2025-05-11 16:34:59 GMT

#Guix migrating to Codeberg 👇
https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2025/migrating-to-codeberg/

2025-05-10 14:05:59 GMT

The great #Guix migration has started.
https://codeberg.org/guix

2025-03-28 15:39:57 GMT

📢 #Guix comrades: two weeks left to discuss and improve the Codeberg migration proposal! 👇
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/guix-consensus-documents.git/tree/002-codeberg.md
Discussion 👉 https://issues.guix.gnu.org/76503

2025-03-15 21:46:56 GMT

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C is terrible and Rust is so much better, but I don’t think memory safety is the only justification for having ‘ls’ in Rust.
Some of those active in this effort worked on replacing GCC with Clang in distros before.

2025-03-15 21:44:11 GMT

Bye, copyleft. Hello, corporate interests.
https://fosstodon.org/@gnutools/114168573791483805

2025-02-23 16:25:15 GMT

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If you missed it, #Guix adopted the “Guix Consensus Document” (GCD) process two weeks ago:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/guix-consensus-documents.git/tree/001-gcd-process.md
This is a collective decision-making process that aims to build consensus on important decisions among contributors. It’s a major milestone for the project.
A couple of GCDs have already been submitted; looking forward to the outcome!

2025-02-23 16:20:53 GMT

Formally submitted GCD 002: “Migrating repositories, issues, and patches to Codeberg”. 🎉
https://issues.guix.gnu.org/76503
Check it out, #Guix people, and share your thoughts!

2025-02-09 15:22:23 GMT

Official #Guix mirror now available 👇
https://codeberg.org/guix/guix-mirror
(It’s just a mirror, no pull requests or issues at this point.)

2025-01-16 15:28:30 GMT

Sounds like the right stance to me for anyone who cares about the human beings out there and about free-software-for-freedom:
https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/16/2025-01-16-No-Billionares-at-FOSDEM-please.html

2025-01-09 11:20:44 GMT

A clear statement.
https://opentermsarchive.org/en/memos/meta-dampens-hate-speech-policy/

2024-12-22 17:58:49 GMT

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You mean to build the image? It’s hard to tell.

2024-12-21 15:36:17 GMT

“Guix Container Images for GitLab CI/CD” by @npub1ky9…k2p5:
https://blog.josefsson.org/2024/12/18/guix-container-images-for-gitlab-ci-cd/
Notice that ‘.gitlab-ci.yml’ first installs Guix on Debian, then runs ‘guix pack guix’ to produce a standalone Guix image, and finally runs builds in that image.
https://gitlab.com/debdistutils/guix/container/-/blob/main/.gitlab-ci.yml?ref_type=heads
#Guix

2024-12-17 15:11:31 GMT

Hey! I’ll be giving a talk at #FOSDEM about the #Shepherd and I can tell you I’ll be in good company!
https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/track/declarative/

2024-11-29 11:00:30 GMT

Hey #Guix folks! Anyone working on #Forgejo packaging?
(I tried ‘guix import go code.gitea.io/gitea -r’ and it ran out of disk space after cloning all these Go repos. But it’s promising!)

2024-11-23 18:39:07 GMT

Hey, I realized it’s been 12 years of #Guix today! 🎉

2024-11-19 19:30:34 GMT

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How about “Guix”? :-)

2024-10-17 16:37:43 GMT

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Codeberg.org runs Forgejo: https://forgejo.org/

2024-10-17 13:54:31 GMT

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… speaking of which: https://sfconservancy.org/GiveUpGitHub/

2024-10-17 13:50:20 GMT

Comrades, the #Guix Science channels have moved from GitHub to Codeberg 👇
https://codeberg.org/guix-science/
Migration was very easy and complete, with pull requests migrated without loss. We have yet to see how contributors can resume work on PRs opened pre-migration, but it looks great so far!

2024-10-16 21:19:41 GMT

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I don’t know, but it’s an issue worth revisiting collectively at some point.

2024-10-16 21:10:09 GMT

Forĝejo went copyleft 👍
https://forgejo.org/2024-08-monthly-update/#forgejo-is-now-copyleft
Copyleft, federation, localization, collective decision-making: signs that the project cares about people and their autonomy.

2024-10-07 09:32:33 GMT

# #Guix trick borrowed from Nix folks: the comma shell function,
# fitting in a single toot, with comments.
#
# Run then given command via 'guix shell'.
function ,
{
pkg_ver="$(set -o pipefail; guix locate "$1" | grep /bin/ | head -1 | cut -f1)"
pkg="$(echo $pkg_ver | cut -d@ -f1)"
test -n "$pkg" && guix shell "$pkg" -- "$@"
}

2024-09-11 10:42:43 GMT

I’m a big fan of malleable and extensible software packages à la Emacs; I think they’re the way to provide practical freedom to users, when licenses provide freedom “de jure” only.
That one can gradually discover the code and fiddle with it blurs the user/developer distinction and reduces the dependency of one group on another.
#FreeSoftware
🧵

2024-09-10 21:48:27 GMT

This 1990 UN General Assembly resolution entitled “Right of peoples to self-determination/Struggle by all available means” is worth a read:
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-184801/
“Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence […]”
“Strongly condemns the constant and deliberate violations of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the expansionist activities of Israel […]”

2024-09-06 19:48:59 GMT

Linux man-pages maintainer’s work on hiatus due to lack of financial support:
https://sourceware.org/pipermail/libc-alpha/2024-September/159717.html

2024-08-31 14:53:11 GMT

After many months, a lot of work by many people, and countless twists, the #Guix ‘core-updates’ branch has been merged! 🎉
It brings updated libc, GCC, TeX Live, and more—check out ‘guix pull --news’. :-)

2024-08-28 14:47:04 GMT

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“Interesting” thing is that Guile-Git’s test suite allowed me to find a uninitialized-value bug introduced in libgit2 1.8.1 (a patch release).

2024-08-28 14:44:20 GMT

#Guile-Git 0.8.0 is out, with support for libgit2 1.8.
https://gitlab.com/guile-git/guile-git

2024-08-22 12:12:17 GMT

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Another example: “Docker is simpler than Guix (or Nix, etc.) because it lets me use Bash, apt, pip, and other proven tools!”
That is a valid first impression, but the problem with Docker is elsewhere: it lets you blindly assemble software in a way that is opaque and non-reproducible.
Appreciating that this is a problem takes time and experience, whereas one can immediately have an opinion on what Dockerfiles look like.

2024-08-22 12:07:52 GMT

Got another of these syntax discussions: “#Guix packaging would look much easier if it used YAML like Conda!”.
This perception exists, but packaging experience shows that the difficulty, instead, lies in coping with funky build systems, providing the right dependencies, etc.
The same extends to many things in computing systems: discussions focus on the surface of things, ignoring that actual complexity stems from unprincipled assembly of whole stacks of software components.

2024-08-20 10:22:27 GMT

The mess that #Anaconda’s new licensing fees is poised to create in academia should be a wake-up call.
From an #OpenScience perspective, and from the perspective of publicly-funded research, it makes no sense to trade autonomy for perceived convenience.
Time to look at commercial offerings suspiciously and to focus on building our commons.
https://toot.aquilenet.fr/system/media_attachments/files/112/993/849/363/791/361/original/ce412e282b6b86f8.png

2024-08-12 20:00:24 GMT

The #Guix home page redesign by [@luis_felipe](https://mastodon.online/@luis_felipe ) has landed, sweet!
https://guix.gnu.org/

2024-07-09 13:29:22 GMT

This year’s edition of SuperComputing, the leading #HPC conference, offers #Guix as one way to evaluate software artifacts that accompany publications 👇
https://sc24.supercomputing.org/program/papers/reproducibility-appendices-badges/
Hopefully a first step towards recognizing the importance of reproducible software deployment in strengthening scientific work.
Huge thanks to my colleagues who worked hard to make this happen!
#SC24 #ReproducibleResearch #OpenScience
https://toot.aquilenet.fr/system/media_attachments/files/112/756/762/230/947/576/original/1ca592a82fb71945.png

2023-09-27 15:59:34 GMT

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GNU’s still here, with tons of users many of which have come to value freedom, with projects like GCC, Emacs, and Guix alive and kicking!
However, while #FreeSoftware production and use has grown by orders of magnitude in that time span, GNU has failed to attract. Chaotic, arrogant, and divisive leadership led the project to be isolated (GFDL vs. Debian anyone?), to lose its dominant position (lack of GCC plugins fueled non-copyleft LLVM), and, worse, to alienate minorities.

2023-09-27 15:58:59 GMT

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I got into GNU by reading about free software, then attempting to contribute code to the Hurd ca. 2002, becoming a Guile co-maintainer ca. 2007, co-organizing a GNU Hackers Meeting in 2011, starting Guix in 2012.
I made friends along the way and learned a lot in a variety of domains—technical, political, social. From my early readings of GNU essays to my technical musings, GNU shaped part of what I am.

2023-09-27 15:58:37 GMT

Today #GNU is turning 40, whee! 🎉
Despite having been involved in GNU for 20 years, I wish I’d be more enthusiastic. It’s certainly an important milestone for #FreeSoftware but it’s kinda bittersweet for me.
🧵 #GNU40