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]]
  24   - [[http://gnupg.org/][GNU libgcrypt]]
  25
  26 Unless `--disable-daemon' was passed, the following packages are needed:
  27
  28   - [[http://sqlite.org/][SQLite 3]]
  29   - [[http://www.bzip.org][libbz2]]
  30   - [[http://gcc.gnu.org][GCC's g++]]
  31
  32 When `--disable-daemon' was passed, you instead need the following:
  33
  34   - [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]]
  35
  36 Optionally, packages from Nixpkgs may be transparently reused from Guix.
  37 For this to work, you need to have a checkout of the Nixpkgs repository;
  38 the `--with-nixpkgs' option allows you to let `configure' know where the
  39 Nixpkgs checkout is.
  40
  41   - [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/][Nixpkgs]]
  42
  43 When building Guix from a checkout, the following packages are also
  44 required:
  45
  46   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/][GNU Autoconf]]
  47   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/][GNU Automake]]
  48   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/][GNU Gettext]]
  49
  50 The "autoreconf -vi" command can be used to generate the build system
  51 infrastructure; it reports an error if an inappropriate version of the
  52 above packages is being used.
  53
  54 * How It Works
  55
  56 Guix does the high-level preparation of a /derivation/.  A derivation is
  57 the promise of a build; it is stored as a text file under
  58 =/nix/store/xxx.drv=.  The (guix derivations) module provides the
  59 `derivation' primitive, as well as higher-level wrappers such as
  60 `build-expression->derivation'.
  61
  62 Guix does remote procedure calls (RPCs) to the Guix or Nix daemon (the
  63 =guix-daemon= or =nix-daemon= command), which in turn performs builds
  64 and accesses to the Nix store on its behalf.  The RPCs are implemented
  65 in the (guix store) module.
  66
  67 * Installing Guix as non-root
  68
  69 The Guix daemon allows software builds to be performed under alternate
  70 user accounts, which are normally created specifically for this
  71 purpose.  For instance, you may have a pool of accounts in the
  72 =guixbuild= group, and then you can instruct =guix-daemon= to use them
  73 like this:
  74
  75   $ guix-daemon --build-users-group=guixbuild
  76
  77 However, unless it is run as root, =guix-daemon= cannot switch users.
  78 In that case, it falls back to using a setuid-root helper program call
  79 =nix-setuid-helper=.  That program is not setuid-root by default when
  80 you install it; instead you should run a command along these lines
  81 (assuming Guix is installed under /usr/local):
  82
  83   # chown root.root /usr/local/libexec/nix-setuid-helper
  84   # chmod 4755 /usr/local/libexec/nix-setuid-helper
  85
  86 * Contact
  87
  88 GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/.
  89
  90 Please email <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug reports or questions regarding
  91 Guix and its distribution; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for
  92 general issues regarding the GNU system.
  93
  94 Join #guix on irc.freenode.net.
  95
  96 * Guix & Nix
  97
  98 GNU Guix is based on [[http://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]].  It implements the same
  99 package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code.
 100 Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described
 101 below.
 102
 103 Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
 104 and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language.  GNU Guix relies
 105 on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
 106
 107 Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the
 108 features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL,
 109 Unicode, libraries, etc.)  And it means that we have a general-purpose
 110 language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages
 111 (EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages.  This broadens what
 112 can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them.
 113
 114 Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
 115 daemon to perform operations on the store.  At the lowest level, Nix
 116 “derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
 117 the store.  Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
 118 by the daemon to perform the build.  Thus, Guix derivations can use
 119 derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa).
 120
 121 With Nix and the [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at
 122 the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
 123 Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
 124 composition and builders.  Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is
 125 written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code,
 126 but exposes all the API as Scheme.
 127
 128 * Related software
 129
 130   - [[http://nixos.org][Nix, Nixpkgs, and NixOS]], functional package manager and associated
 131     software distribution, are the inspiration of Guix
 132   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/][GNU Stow]] builds around the idea of one directory per prefix, and a
 133     symlink tree to create user environments
 134   - [[http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~arnej/store/storedoc_6.html][STORE]] shares the same idea
 135   - [[https://live.gnome.org/OSTree/][GNOME's OSTree]] allows bootable system images to be built from a
 136     specified set of packages
 137   - The [[http://www.gnu.org/s/gsrc/][GNU Source Release Collection]] (GSRC) is a user-land software
 138     distribution; unlike Guix, it relies on core tools available on the
 139     host system