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 * Requirements
  20
  21 GNU Guix currently depends on the following packages:
  22
  23   - [[http://gnu.org/software/guile/][GNU Guile 2.0.x]], version 2.0.7 or later
  24   - [[http://gnupg.org/][GNU libgcrypt]]
  25   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/make/][GNU Make]]
  26   - optionally [[http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/guile-json/][Guile-JSON]], for the 'guix import pypi' command
  27   - optionally [[http://www.gnutls.org][GnuTLS]] compiled with guile support enabled, for HTTPS support
  28     in the 'guix download' command.  Note that 'guix import pypi' requires
  29     this functionality.
  30
  31 Unless `--disable-daemon' was passed, the following packages are needed:
  32
  33   - [[http://sqlite.org/][SQLite 3]]
  34   - [[http://www.bzip.org][libbz2]]
  35   - [[http://gcc.gnu.org][GCC's g++]]
  36
  37 When `--disable-daemon' was passed, you instead need the following:
  38
  39   - [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]]
  40
  41 * Installation
  42
  43 See the manual for the installation instructions, either by running
  44
  45   info -f doc/guix.info "(guix) Installation"
  46
  47 or by checking the [[http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#Installation][web copy of the manual]].
  48
  49 For information on installation from a Git checkout, please see the ‘HACKING’
  50 file.
  51
  52 * Installing Guix from Guix
  53
  54 You can re-build and re-install Guix using a system that already runs Guix.
  55 To do so:
  56
  57   - Install the dependencies (see 'Requirements' above) and build tools using
  58     Guix:
  59
  60       guix package --install autoconf automake bzip2 gcc-toolchain gettext \
  61                              guile libgcrypt pkg-config sqlite
  62
  63   - Set the environment variables that Guix recommends you to set during the
  64     package installation process:
  65       ACLOCAL_PATH, CPATH, LIBRARY_PATH, PKG_CONFIG_PATH
  66
  67   - Set the PATH environment variable to refer to the profile:
  68       PATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/bin:$PATH
  69
  70   - Re-run the 'configure' script passing it the option
  71     '--with-libgcrypt-prefix=$HOME/.guix-profile/', as well as
  72     '--localstatedir=/somewhere', where '/somewhere' is the 'localstatedir'
  73     value of the currently installed Guix (failing to do that would lead the
  74     new Guix to consider the store to be empty!).
  75
  76   - Run "make", "make check", and "make install".
  77
  78 * How It Works
  79
  80 Guix does the high-level preparation of a /derivation/.  A derivation is
  81 the promise of a build; it is stored as a text file under
  82 =/gnu/store/xxx.drv=.  The (guix derivations) module provides the
  83 `derivation' primitive, as well as higher-level wrappers such as
  84 `build-expression->derivation'.
  85
  86 Guix does remote procedure calls (RPCs) to the Guix or Nix daemon (the
  87 =guix-daemon= or =nix-daemon= command), which in turn performs builds
  88 and accesses to the Nix store on its behalf.  The RPCs are implemented
  89 in the (guix store) module.
  90
  91 * Installing Guix as non-root
  92
  93 The Guix daemon allows software builds to be performed under alternate
  94 user accounts, which are normally created specifically for this
  95 purpose.  For instance, you may have a pool of accounts in the
  96 =guixbuild= group, and then you can instruct =guix-daemon= to use them
  97 like this:
  98
  99   $ guix-daemon --build-users-group=guixbuild
 100
 101 However, unless it is run as root, =guix-daemon= cannot switch users.
 102 In that case, it falls back to using a setuid-root helper program call
 103 =nix-setuid-helper=.  That program is not setuid-root by default when
 104 you install it; instead you should run a command along these lines
 105 (assuming Guix is installed under /usr/local):
 106
 107   # chown root.root /usr/local/libexec/nix-setuid-helper
 108   # chmod 4755 /usr/local/libexec/nix-setuid-helper
 109
 110 * Contact
 111
 112 GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/.
 113
 114 Please email <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug reports or questions regarding
 115 Guix and its distribution; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for
 116 general issues regarding the GNU system.
 117
 118 Join #guix on irc.freenode.net.
 119
 120 * Guix & Nix
 121
 122 GNU Guix is based on [[http://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]].  It implements the same
 123 package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code.
 124 Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described
 125 below.
 126
 127 Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
 128 and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language.  GNU Guix relies
 129 on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
 130
 131 Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the
 132 features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL,
 133 Unicode, libraries, etc.)  And it means that we have a general-purpose
 134 language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages
 135 (EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages.  This broadens what
 136 can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them.
 137
 138 Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
 139 daemon to perform operations on the store.  At the lowest level, Nix
 140 “derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
 141 the store.  Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
 142 by the daemon to perform the build.  Thus, Guix derivations can use
 143 derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa).
 144
 145 With Nix and the [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at
 146 the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
 147 Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
 148 composition and builders.  Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is
 149 written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code,
 150 but exposes all the API as Scheme.
 151
 152 * Related software
 153
 154   - [[http://nixos.org][Nix, Nixpkgs, and NixOS]], functional package manager and associated
 155     software distribution, are the inspiration of Guix
 156   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/][GNU Stow]] builds around the idea of one directory per prefix, and a
 157     symlink tree to create user environments
 158   - [[http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~arnej/store/storedoc_6.html][STORE]] shares the same idea
 159   - [[https://live.gnome.org/OSTree/][GNOME's OSTree]] allows bootable system images to be built from a
 160     specified set of packages
 161   - The [[http://www.gnu.org/s/gsrc/][GNU Source Release Collection]] (GSRC) is a user-land software
 162     distribution; unlike Guix, it relies on core tools available on the
 163     host system