README

   1 -*- mode: org -*-
   2
   3 [[http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/][GNU Guix]] (IPA: /ɡiːks/) is a purely functional package manager, and
   4 associated free software distribution, for the [[http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html][GNU system]].  In addition
   5 to standard package management features, Guix supports transactional
   6 upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user
   7 profiles, and garbage collection.
   8
   9 It provides [[http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/][Guile]] Scheme APIs, including a high-level embedded
  10 domain-specific languages (EDSLs) to describe how packages are to be
  11 built and composed.
  12
  13 A user-land free software distribution for GNU/Linux comes as part of
  14 Guix.
  15
  16 Guix is based on the [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]] package manager.
  17
  18
  19 * Hacking
  20
  21 GNU Guix currently depends on the following packages:
  22
  23   - [[http://gnu.org/software/guile/][GNU Guile 2.0.x]]
  24   - [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]]
  25   - [[http://gnupg.org/][GNU libgcrypt]]
  26
  27 Optionally, packages from Nixpkgs may be transparently reused from Guix.
  28 For this to work, you need to have a checkout of the Nixpkgs repository;
  29 the `--with-nixpkgs' option allows you to let `configure' know where the
  30 Nixpkgs checkout is.
  31
  32   - [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/][Nixpkgs]]
  33
  34 When building Guix from a checkout, the following packages are also
  35 required:
  36
  37   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/][GNU Autoconf]]
  38   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/][GNU Automake]]
  39   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/][GNU Gettext]]
  40
  41 The "autoreconf -vi" command can be used to generate the build system
  42 infrastructure; it reports an error if an inappropriate version of the
  43 above packages is being used.
  44
  45 * How It Works
  46
  47 Guix does the high-level preparation of a /derivation/.  A derivation is
  48 the promise of a build; it is stored as a text file under
  49 =/nix/store/xxx.drv=.  The (guix derivations) module provides the
  50 `derivation' primitive, as well as higher-level wrappers such as
  51 `build-expression->derivation'.
  52
  53 Guix does remote procedure calls (RPCs) to the Nix daemon (the
  54 =nix-worker --daemon= command), which in turn performs builds and
  55 accesses to the Nix store on its behalf.  The RPCs are implemented in
  56 the (guix store) module.
  57
  58 * Contact
  59
  60 GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/.
  61
  62 Please email <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug reports or questions regarding
  63 Guix and its distribution; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for
  64 general issues regarding the GNU system.
  65
  66 Join #guix on irc.freenode.net.
  67
  68 * Guix & Nix
  69
  70 GNU Guix is based on [[http://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]].  It implements the same
  71 package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code.
  72 Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described
  73 below.
  74
  75 Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
  76 and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language.  GNU Guix relies
  77 on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
  78
  79 Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the
  80 features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL,
  81 Unicode, libraries, etc.)  And it means that we have a general-purpose
  82 language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages
  83 (EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages.  This broadens what
  84 can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them.
  85
  86 Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
  87 daemon to perform operations on the store.  At the lowest level, Nix
  88 “derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
  89 the store.  Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
  90 by the daemon to perform the build.  Thus, Guix derivations can use
  91 derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa).
  92
  93 With Nix and the [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at
  94 the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
  95 Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
  96 composition and builders.  Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is
  97 written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code,
  98 but exposes all the API as Scheme.
  99
 100 * Related software
 101
 102   - [[http://nixos.org][Nix, Nixpkgs, and NixOS]], functional package manager and associated
 103     software distribution, are the inspiration of Guix
 104   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/][GNU Stow]] builds around the idea of one directory per prefix, and a
 105     symlink tree to create user environments
 106   - [[http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~arnej/store/storedoc_6.html][STORE]] shares the same idea
 107   - [[https://live.gnome.org/OSTree/][GNOME's OSTree]] allows bootable system images to be built from a
 108     specified set of packages
 109   - The [[http://www.gnu.org/s/gsrc/][GNU Source Release Collection]] (GSRC) is a user-land software
 110     distribution; unlike Guix, it relies on core tools available on the
 111     host system