[PlanetCCRMA] PlanetCCRMA and cross-distro packaging systems

[Yury Bulka]

Dear PlanetCCRMA community,

For some time I was thinking about the potential of cross-distribution
packaging systems in the context of libre audio software on Linux and
Fedora specifically.

The idea is that in theory we could minimize the duplication of
work by different distributions, and provide a way to install the most
recent versions of our favorite audio software on any distribution in
some universal format.

Then, the effort of maintaining PlanetCCRMA could shift from recompiling
and maintaining the huge list of packages to things like the
realtime-patched kernel, while the packages could be handled by a wider
community of linux audio enthusiasts.

Initally I thought about flatpak as a potential possibility, but then
came Fedora 28 and I was looking for ways to install the current version
of SuperCollider. Then something reminded me about the existence of Gnu
Guix: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/

And Nix:
http://nixos.org/nix/

Both are distribution-agnostic source-based package managers with very
interesting set of properties like rollbacks, switchable environments,
etc.

I was surprised to see that the most recent version of SuperCollider was
available as Nix's packages.

Since the installation of nix on Fedora turned out to be simpler than
Guix (at least in single-user mode), I went ahead and installed nix, and
then SuperCollider (3.9.3), jack and qjackctl from nix.

The only issue I encountered was that nix-installed SC could not work
with Fedora-installed jackd, so I had to install jackd from nix as
well.

I use SC with emacs though, so I haven't tested the IDE extensively, but
at least it boots up fine.

PureData seems to also be available through nix, as well as faust and csound:
https://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html#puredata
https://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html#csound
https://nixos.org/nixos/packages.html#faust

So it seems that at least a chunk of the work on cross-distribution
audio software packaging has already been done.

What are your thought on this?

Best,
Yury.