README

   1 -*- mode: org -*-
   2
   3 [[https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/][GNU Guix]] (IPA: /ɡiːks/) is a purely functional package manager, and
   4 associated free software distribution, for the [[https://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 [[https://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 GNU Guix can be used on top of an already-installed GNU/Linux distribution, or
  14 it can be used standalone (we call that “Guix System”).
  15
  16 Guix is based on the [[https://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]] package manager.
  17
  18
  19 * Requirements
  20
  21 GNU Guix currently depends on the following packages:
  22
  23   - [[https://gnu.org/software/guile/][GNU Guile 2.2.x]]
  24   - [[https://notabug.org/cwebber/guile-gcrypt][Guile-Gcrypt]] 0.1.0 or later
  25   - [[https://www.gnu.org/software/make/][GNU Make]]
  26   - [[https://www.gnutls.org][GnuTLS]] compiled with guile support enabled
  27   - [[https://notabug.org/guile-sqlite3/guile-sqlite3][Guile-SQLite3]], version 0.1.0 or later
  28   - [[https://gitlab.com/guile-git/guile-git][Guile-Git]]
  29   - [[http://www.zlib.net/][zlib]]
  30   - [[https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/guile-json/][Guile-JSON]]
  31
  32 Unless `--disable-daemon' was passed, the following packages are needed:
  33
  34   - [[https://gnupg.org/][GNU libgcrypt]]
  35   - [[https://sqlite.org/][SQLite 3]]
  36   - [[https://gcc.gnu.org][GCC's g++]]
  37   - optionally [[http://www.bzip.org][libbz2]]
  38
  39 When `--disable-daemon' was passed, you instead need the following:
  40
  41   - [[https://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]]
  42
  43 * Installation
  44
  45 See the manual for the installation instructions, either by running
  46
  47   info -f doc/guix.info "Installation"
  48
  49 or by checking the [[https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#Installation][web copy of the manual]].
  50
  51 For information on installation from a Git checkout, please see the section
  52 "Building from Git" in the manual.
  53
  54 * Installing Guix from Guix
  55
  56 You can re-build and re-install Guix using a system that already runs Guix.
  57 To do so:
  58
  59   - Start a shell with the development environment for Guix:
  60
  61       guix environment guix
  62
  63   - Re-run the 'configure' script passing it the option
  64     '--localstatedir=/somewhere', where '/somewhere' is the 'localstatedir'
  65     value of the currently installed Guix (failing to do that would lead the
  66     new Guix to consider the store to be empty!).
  67
  68   - Run "make", "make check", and "make install".
  69
  70 * How It Works
  71
  72 Guix does the high-level preparation of a /derivation/.  A derivation is
  73 the promise of a build; it is stored as a text file under
  74 =/gnu/store/xxx.drv=.  The (guix derivations) module provides the
  75 `derivation' primitive, as well as higher-level wrappers such as
  76 `build-expression->derivation'.
  77
  78 Guix does remote procedure calls (RPCs) to the build daemon (the =guix-daemon=
  79 command), which in turn performs builds and accesses to the store on its
  80 behalf.  The RPCs are implemented in the (guix store) module.
  81
  82 * Contact
  83
  84 GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/.
  85
  86 Please email <help-guix@gnu.org> for questions and <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug
  87 reports; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for general issues regarding the
  88 GNU system.
  89
  90 Join #guix on irc.freenode.net.
  91
  92 * Guix & Nix
  93
  94 GNU Guix is based on [[https://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]].  It implements the same
  95 package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code.
  96 Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described
  97 below.
  98
  99 Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
 100 and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language.  GNU Guix relies
 101 on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
 102
 103 Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the
 104 features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL,
 105 Unicode, libraries, etc.)  And it means that we have a general-purpose
 106 language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages
 107 (EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages.  This broadens what
 108 can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them.
 109
 110 Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
 111 daemon to perform operations on the store.  At the lowest level, Nix
 112 “derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
 113 the store.  Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
 114 by the daemon to perform the build.  Thus, Guix derivations can use
 115 derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa).
 116
 117 With Nix and the [[https://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at
 118 the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
 119 Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
 120 composition and builders.  Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is
 121 written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code,
 122 but exposes all the API as Scheme.
 123
 124 * Related software
 125
 126   - [[https://nixos.org][Nix, Nixpkgs, and NixOS]], functional package manager and associated
 127     software distribution, are the inspiration of Guix
 128   - [[https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/][GNU Stow]] builds around the idea of one directory per prefix, and a
 129     symlink tree to create user environments
 130   - [[https://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~arnej/store/storedoc_6.html][STORE]] shares the same idea
 131   - [[https://live.gnome.org/OSTree/][GNOME's OSTree]] allows bootable system images to be built from a
 132     specified set of packages
 133   - The [[https://www.gnu.org/s/gsrc/][GNU Source Release Collection]] (GSRC) is a user-land software
 134     distribution; unlike Guix, it relies on core tools available on the
 135     host system