path: root/2024-06-18-guix-social/slides.org

#+TITLE:  Get rich slow with Guile and Guix
#+AUTHOR: David Thompson
#+DATE:   2024-06-18 Tue

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# * To-Do
# ** TODO Fix Christine deadname in old blog post

* Get rich slow with Guile and Guix
Guix Social

2024-06-18

https://dthompson.us

* Hi!
- I'm David Thompson
- From Massachusetts, USA
  - The birthplace of Scheme and Free Software
- CTO at Spritely Institute
- Guile/Guix user and contributor for over 10 years

* tl;dr
- 2012: Discovered Scheme then started using Guile
- 2013: Became an early Guix contributor
- 2015-2017: Made my own tools/libraries with Guile
- 2022-now: Making FOSS full-time

* 2012: Libreplanet
In hindsight, the most defining moment in my career path:

- Yukihiro Matsumoto: "How Emacs Changed My Life"
- Christine Lemmer-Webber: GNU MediaGoblin

* 2012: Libreplanet
- Immediately dropped Vim for Emacs
- Started to use/hack on MediaGoblin

* 2012: Ruby
- First professional development job writing Ruby
- Relevant to Guix, eventually

* 2012: Game dev
- Wanted to make games as a hobby
- Went the C core with embedded "scripting" language route
- Started with Lua, but then...

* 2012: SICP
#+REVEAL_HTML: <img class="stretch" src="sicp.jpg">

* 2012: Guile
- "official" GNU extension language
- I was into GNU at the time
- Can extend C programs... but at what cost?

* 2013: First FOSS patch
- Like many, I struggled to find a way to participate in FOSS
  development
- GNU MediaGoblin turned out to be very welcoming!
  - Issue tracker had "bitesized" tag for newcomers
  - I added an option to enable/disable comments

* 2013: Guix
- I hadn't heard of Nix, but this new Guix thing by Ludovic Courtès
  looked fascinating
- Started before the distro was bootstrapped
- Switched from Debian to Guix later

* Why Guix?
- Functional package management model
- Practical software freedom
- Whole-system rollback
- Easy development environments

* Extend vs. Embed
- Nix embeds Bash into package recipes
- Guix uses Guile all the way down (almost)
- Scheme isn't *icing* on top of C++/Bash
  - Scheme is the *cake*

* 2013: Guix contributor
- First Guix patch: Packaged libtheora
- Packaged SDL, SDL2, etc. shortly after
- Ludo gave me commit access!

* 2013: Guile contributor
- First patch to Guile: =alist->hash-table=
- Worked on =(system repl coop-server)= with Mark Weaver

* 2014: Ruby build system
- Wrote =(guix build-system ruby)= and initial Ruby packages
- Pjotr Prins was involved in this, too

* 2014: guix environment
- Wanted something like =nix shell=
- Would become =guix shell= later
- Did not achieve consensus on sane defaults
  - Remember =--ad-hoc=?
- =guix shell= corrected the problems, eventually

* 2015: guix publish
- Guix wanted to encourage more substitute providers
  - but Hydra was a large piece of software
- I wrote the initial version of =guix publish=
  - Pure Guile; uses the =(web ...)= modules

* 2015: guix publish
- Seems to have been useful over the years
  - but substitute availability is far from a solved problem
- Distributed substitutes seem like the way to go

* 2015: call-with-container
- Learned that there was more to containers than layered disk images
  - Thanks to Docker for "container" ambiguity! 😞
- The good stuff is actually the runtime environment (Linux namespaces, etc.)
- Can we implement just the good parts of Docker for Guix?

* 2015: call-with-container
- Don't mount opaque disk images of unknown provenance
- Bind mount =/gnu/store= directories instead
- Containment + reproducibility
- Used in:
  - =guix shell --container=
  - =guix system container=
  - containerized Shepherd services

* 2015: Haunt
- Static site generator written in Guile
- Uses =guix shell= for development environment
- Guix is the first (only?) distro that gets package updates
- Both the Guix and Guile websites use Haunt

* 2016: Oops, I bought a house
- Who could have imagined this would use up all my free time?
- Guix contibutions greatly reduced
  - I've never returned to my previous level of activity
  - But the Guix community has grown *a lot*!
  - I can be a user now (mostly) 👾

* 2017: Chickadee

#+REVEAL_HTML: <img class="stretch" src="chickadee-3d.png">

- After all this time, I still wanted to make games
- Created Guile-SDL2 along the way
- Uses =guix shell= for development, naturally

* Chickadee
- *not* a wrapper around raylib, etc.
- Inspired by Guix to *maximize* usage of Guile
- Rendering code 100% Scheme (until we hit libGL)
  - Made possible by Andy Wingo's incredible compiler/VM work

* 2019: guix deploy
- Wanted an answer to Chef, Ansible, etc.
- Co-mentored Jakob L. Kreuze with Christine Lemmer-Webber for Google
  Summer of Code
- A GSoC project that made it upstream!
- I now manage my personal server with =guix deploy=
- Lots of improvements could be made
  - Any volunteers? 🙂

* Intermission: Pandemic

* 2022: Lisp Game Jam
- Became co-host of the Lisp Game Jam on itch.io
  - along with Fennel maintainer technomancy
- This will become relevant shortly

* 2022: Spritely

#+REVEAL_HTML: <img style="background-color: #edeaee; border-radius: 5px;" class="stretch" src="spritely-institute-logo.png">

- Spritely is a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit
- Cofounded by *Christine Lemmer-Webber*
  - now famous for ActivityPub!
- Building the next generation of *secure*, distributed networking
  infrastructure
- Object capability security

https://spritely.institute

* OCapN: The Object Capability Network

#+REVEAL_HTML: <video src="ocapn-handoff.mp4" autoplay="true" loop="true" class="stretch"/>

* OCapN
- Open standard for capability-secure networking
- Pre-standardization phase

https://ocapn.org

* My role at Spritely
- Initially hired as Core Infrastructure Architect
  - now CTO
- First big project: Distributed debugging

* 2023: Distributed debugger

#+REVEAL_HTML: <img class="stretch" src="questie-lamport-diagram.png">

* How Spritely uses Guix
- =guix shell= for development environments
- =guix deploy= to manage servers over SSH
- =guix pack -f docker= to build CI images
- Goblins and Hoot releases are immediately published to Guix on
  release day

* Highlight: GitLab CI

I've noticed people asking about this lately:

#+BEGIN_SRC sh
  guix pack -m ci-manifest.scm -C zstd -f docker -S /bin=bin
  skopeo copy ...
#+END_SRC

* 2023: Hoot

#+REVEAL_HTML: <img class="stretch" src="hoot-future-of-scheme-hacking.png">

* 2023: Hoot
- Hoot is a Scheme-to-WebAssembly compiler
  - with its own toolchain!
  - *No* emscripten!
- Scheme in the browser!
- Lead engineer: Andy Wingo (Guile maintainer)
- I wrote the Wasm interpreter =(wasm vm)=
- Still actively working on toolchain and Scheme implementation

* 2023: Strigoform
#+REVEAL_HTML: <iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed-upload/8997570?color=333333" allowfullscreen="" width="482" height="662"><a href="https://davexunit.itch.io/strigoform">Play Strigoform on itch.io</a></iframe>

* 2023: Strigoform
- My game dev fascination comes full circle!
- Made for the Autumn Lisp Game Jam
- One of the first Wasm GC games to be published
- Built with Hoot 0.1 + some additional stuff from the main branch
- Largest program built with Hoot at the time

* 2024: Cirkoban
#+REVEAL_HTML: <iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed-upload/10583669?color=222034" allowfullscreen="" width="640" height="500"><a href="https://davexunit.itch.io/cirkoban">Play Cirkoban on itch.io</a></iframe>

* 2024: Cirkoban
- Made for the Spring Lisp Game Jam
- Built with Hoot 0.4.1 and a WIP port of Goblins
- Uses Goblins actors and transactional rollback

* The future: guix develop
- =docker compose= but for Guix
- I've wanted this for 10 years!
- Like =guix shell= but also spawns a Shepherd
- Uh oh, *another* kind of service?

* The future: Distributed shepherd
- Currently funded by NLnet and in development by Juli Sims
- Shepherd + Spritely Goblins
- Orchestrate clusters of Guix machines securely!
- =guix deploy= over Object Capabilities Network (OCapN)?

* The future: Distributed substitutes
- Using ERIS perhaps?
  https://codeberg.org/eris/guile-eris/

* The future: Guix, the OCap OS
- Unified services (no system vs. home split)
- Reduce ambient authority on Linux
- Build on =call-with-container=?

* The future: Chickadee + Hoot
- Native + web builds of Guile games from the same source
- Need to improve Wasm GC to make this possible

* Fin
- Opportunties come from unexpected vectors
- Guile and Guix have come a long way!
- Keep pushing the limits of what Guile can do!
- Thank you to the Guix Social organizers!

* Questions?

https://dthompson.us

https://spritely.institute