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