When it comes to software deployment, we are getting used to a new distribution of roles among many actors: traditional distros take care of core software pieces, “application bundles” à la Docker/Flatpak provide complex applications, Cabal, Gem, npm, pip, and friends take care of language-specific software, and Puppet/Ansible orchestrate the whole thing. Each of these tools has its justification, but the end result is a maze that’s hard to deal with.

In this talk I will present GNU Guix, a software deployment toolbox and its associated distro that feature transactional upgrades and rollbacks, declarative OS deployment inspired by Nix, and reproducible builds. I will show how Guix approaches a variety of use cases: “package management” à la apt-get, environment management à la VirtualEnv, Ansible-style declarative OS deployment, and container provisioning à la Docker.

Guix emphasizes programmability and one of its salient features is that it provides a unified Scheme programming environment to deal with with all the aspects of configuration, deployment, and system management—including service management by PID 1. I will illustrate how this works out on standalone Guix systems, and show the benefits of the approach by discussing applications that take advantage of Guix as a library to support reproducible software deployment.

Last, I will reflect on the road that led to Guix 1.0 six months ago and present some of the challenges ahead.