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 Nix daemon (the
  63 =nix-worker --daemon= command), which in turn performs builds and
  64 accesses to the Nix store on its behalf.  The RPCs are implemented in
  65 the (guix store) module.
  66
  67 * Contact
  68
  69 GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/.
  70
  71 Please email <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug reports or questions regarding
  72 Guix and its distribution; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for
  73 general issues regarding the GNU system.
  74
  75 Join #guix on irc.freenode.net.
  76
  77 * Guix & Nix
  78
  79 GNU Guix is based on [[http://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]].  It implements the same
  80 package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code.
  81 Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described
  82 below.
  83
  84 Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
  85 and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language.  GNU Guix relies
  86 on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
  87
  88 Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the
  89 features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL,
  90 Unicode, libraries, etc.)  And it means that we have a general-purpose
  91 language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages
  92 (EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages.  This broadens what
  93 can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them.
  94
  95 Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
  96 daemon to perform operations on the store.  At the lowest level, Nix
  97 “derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
  98 the store.  Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
  99 by the daemon to perform the build.  Thus, Guix derivations can use
 100 derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa).
 101
 102 With Nix and the [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at
 103 the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
 104 Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
 105 composition and builders.  Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is
 106 written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code,
 107 but exposes all the API as Scheme.
 108
 109 * Related software
 110
 111   - [[http://nixos.org][Nix, Nixpkgs, and NixOS]], functional package manager and associated
 112     software distribution, are the inspiration of Guix
 113   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/][GNU Stow]] builds around the idea of one directory per prefix, and a
 114     symlink tree to create user environments
 115   - [[http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~arnej/store/storedoc_6.html][STORE]] shares the same idea
 116   - [[https://live.gnome.org/OSTree/][GNOME's OSTree]] allows bootable system images to be built from a
 117     specified set of packages
 118   - The [[http://www.gnu.org/s/gsrc/][GNU Source Release Collection]] (GSRC) is a user-land software
 119     distribution; unlike Guix, it relies on core tools available on the
 120     host system