Source Code Archiving to the Rescue of Reproducible Deployment

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

The ability to verify research results and to experiment with methodologies are core tenets of science. As research results are increasingly the outcome of computational processes, software plays a central role. GNU Guix is a software deployment tool that supports reproducible software deployment, making it a foundation for computational research workflows. To achieve reproducibility, we must first ensure the source code of software packages Guix deploys remains available. We describe our work connecting Guix with Software Heritage, the universal source code archive, making Guix the first free software distribution and tool backed by a stable archive. Our contribution is twofold: we explain the rationale and present the design and implementation we came up with; second, we report on the archival coverage for package source code with data collected over five years and discuss remaining challenges.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2nd ACM Conference on Reproducibility and Replicability, REP 2024
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages36-45
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9798400705304
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Jun 2024
Event2nd ACM Conference on Reproducibility and Replicability, REP 2024 - Rennes, France
Duration: 18 Jun 202420 Jun 2024

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 2nd ACM Conference on Reproducibility and Replicability, REP 2024

Conference

Conference2nd ACM Conference on Reproducibility and Replicability, REP 2024
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityRennes
Period18/06/2420/06/24

Keywords

  • Guix
  • Software Heritage
  • digital preservation
  • functional package management
  • replicability
  • reproducible research

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