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