README

   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!).  We recommend to use the
  67     value '/var'.
  68
  69   - Run "make", "make check", and "make install".
  70
  71 * How It Works
  72
  73 Guix does the high-level preparation of a /derivation/.  A derivation is
  74 the promise of a build; it is stored as a text file under
  75 =/gnu/store/xxx.drv=.  The (guix derivations) module provides the
  76 `derivation' primitive, as well as higher-level wrappers such as
  77 `build-expression->derivation'.
  78
  79 Guix does remote procedure calls (RPCs) to the build daemon (the =guix-daemon=
  80 command), which in turn performs builds and accesses to the store on its
  81 behalf.  The RPCs are implemented in the (guix store) module.
  82
  83 * Contact
  84
  85 GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/.
  86
  87 Please email <help-guix@gnu.org> for questions and <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug
  88 reports; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for general issues regarding the
  89 GNU system.
  90
  91 Join #guix on irc.freenode.net.
  92
  93 * Guix & Nix
  94
  95 GNU Guix is based on [[https://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]].  It implements the same
  96 package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code.
  97 Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described
  98 below.
  99
 100 Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
 101 and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language.  GNU Guix relies
 102 on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
 103
 104 Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the
 105 features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL,
 106 Unicode, libraries, etc.)  And it means that we have a general-purpose
 107 language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages
 108 (EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages.  This broadens what
 109 can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them.
 110
 111 Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
 112 daemon to perform operations on the store.  At the lowest level, Nix
 113 “derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
 114 the store.  Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
 115 by the daemon to perform the build.  Thus, Guix derivations can use
 116 derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa).
 117
 118 With Nix and the [[https://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at
 119 the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
 120 Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
 121 composition and builders.  Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is
 122 written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code,
 123 but exposes all the API as Scheme.
 124
 125 * Related software
 126
 127   - [[https://nixos.org][Nix, Nixpkgs, and NixOS]], functional package manager and associated
 128     software distribution, are the inspiration of Guix
 129   - [[https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/][GNU Stow]] builds around the idea of one directory per prefix, and a
 130     symlink tree to create user environments
 131   - [[https://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~arnej/store/storedoc_6.html][STORE]] shares the same idea
 132   - [[https://live.gnome.org/OSTree/][GNOME's OSTree]] allows bootable system images to be built from a
 133     specified set of packages
 134   - The [[https://www.gnu.org/s/gsrc/][GNU Source Release Collection]] (GSRC) is a user-land software
 135     distribution; unlike Guix, it relies on core tools available on the
 136     host system