| 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 |