Thanks to Timothy Sample, bzip2 tarballs are now added to the #Disarchive database—meaning #Guix can actually recover them. Example:
https://hpc.guix.info/package/valgrind
Guix-HPC — Details for valgrind

Fun fact: one tarball for which #Disarchive (via zgz) fails to determine the compression parameters is that of… zlib.

Fellow hacker Simon Tournier did an experiment: reproducing a pure #Guix 2020 paper in the worst-case scenario—shutting down network access except for #SoftwareHeritage and #Disarchive, and from there rebuilding everything from source.
https://simon.tournier.info/posts/2023-06-23-hackathon-repro.html

Spoiler alert: there are lots of bumps on the road. But it works in the end and there are many lessons we can learn to improve on it.

#ReproducibleResearch #OpenScience

Redoing one paper from ReScience C back on 2020

Timothy Sample just published an updated “Preservation of Guix” report:
https://ngyro.com/pog-reports/latest/

Key takeaway is that 87% of the source code of packages present in #Guix today is archived via #SoftwareHeritage + #Disarchive, 77% if we look at all the packages that appeared in Guix between May 2019 and today.

Preservation of Guix Report

The database at https://disarchive.guix.gnu.org now includes #Disarchive metadata for tar.xz archives!

👉 https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2022-08/msg00061.html

Concretely, it means that .xz tarballs #Guix refers to can be recovered using that database + #SoftwareHeritage.

Disarchive database of GNU Guix

Timothy Sample and the SWH team discuss ways to integrate the #Disarchive database in #SoftwareHeritage:
https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/swh-devel/2022-02/msg00007.html

Good news for long-term source code preservation and support in #Guix!
👉 https://www.softwareheritage.org/2022/01/13/preserving-source-code-archive-files/

This grant will allow Timothy to further work on #Disarchive, the missing link between #SoftwareHeritage and the deployment tools such as #Guix. 👍

Preserving source code archive files

As announced here before, we partnered with funders around the world to provide grants for experts that are willing to engage with the long term mission of Software Heritage. Today we are delighted to share that one more subgrant has been awarded! Thanks to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Timothy Sample, will be working to enable the […]

Timothy Sample published a new Preservation of #Guix Report, showing more details as to what’s archived and what’s missing from #SoftwareHeritage:
https://ngyro.com/pog-reports/2021-12-06/

The breakdown now shows tar.xz, tar.bz2, git, hg, svn, etc., which helps understand what’s not being archived or what’s not correctly handled by #Disarchive.

Preservation of Guix Report

Just finished presenting how #SoftwareHeritage helps #Guix achieve reproducible deployment, including the latest advances around #Disarchive.

Great to have the opportunity to share with this fine audience!

And of course, 👍 to Timothy, Simon, and everyone who made it happen in the first place. 🙂

Timothy Sample on tradeoffs in #Disarchive for lossless #tar header compression:
https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/swh-devel/2021-10/msg00044.html