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 A user-land free software distribution for GNU/Linux comes as part of
  14 Guix.
  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 or 2.0.x]], version 2.0.9 or later
  24   - [[https://gnupg.org/][GNU libgcrypt]]
  25   - [[https://www.gnu.org/software/make/][GNU Make]]
  26   - [[https://www.gnutls.org][GnuTLS]] compiled with guile support enabled.
  27   - [[https://gitlab.com/guile-git/guile-git][Guile-Git]]
  28   - optionally [[https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/guile-json/][Guile-JSON]], for the 'guix import pypi' command
  29
  30 Unless `--disable-daemon' was passed, the following packages are needed:
  31
  32   - [[https://sqlite.org/][SQLite 3]]
  33   - [[http://www.bzip.org][libbz2]]
  34   - [[https://gcc.gnu.org][GCC's g++]]
  35
  36 When `--disable-daemon' was passed, you instead need the following:
  37
  38   - [[https://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]]
  39
  40 * Installation
  41
  42 See the manual for the installation instructions, either by running
  43
  44   info -f doc/guix.info "Installation"
  45
  46 or by checking the [[https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#Installation][web copy of the manual]].
  47
  48 For information on installation from a Git checkout, please see the section
  49 "Building from Git" in the manual.
  50
  51 * Installing Guix from Guix
  52
  53 You can re-build and re-install Guix using a system that already runs Guix.
  54 To do so:
  55
  56   - Start a shell with the development environment for Guix:
  57
  58       guix environment guix
  59
  60   - Re-run the 'configure' script passing it the option
  61     '--localstatedir=/somewhere', where '/somewhere' is the 'localstatedir'
  62     value of the currently installed Guix (failing to do that would lead the
  63     new Guix to consider the store to be empty!).
  64
  65   - Run "make", "make check", and "make install".
  66
  67 * How It Works
  68
  69 Guix does the high-level preparation of a /derivation/.  A derivation is
  70 the promise of a build; it is stored as a text file under
  71 =/gnu/store/xxx.drv=.  The (guix derivations) module provides the
  72 `derivation' primitive, as well as higher-level wrappers such as
  73 `build-expression->derivation'.
  74
  75 Guix does remote procedure calls (RPCs) to the Guix or Nix daemon (the
  76 =guix-daemon= or =nix-daemon= command), which in turn performs builds
  77 and accesses to the Nix store on its behalf.  The RPCs are implemented
  78 in the (guix store) module.
  79
  80 * Installing Guix as non-root
  81
  82 The Guix daemon allows software builds to be performed under alternate
  83 user accounts, which are normally created specifically for this
  84 purpose.  For instance, you may have a pool of accounts in the
  85 =guixbuild= group, and then you can instruct =guix-daemon= to use them
  86 like this:
  87
  88   $ guix-daemon --build-users-group=guixbuild
  89
  90 However, unless it is run as root, =guix-daemon= cannot switch users.
  91 In that case, it falls back to using a setuid-root helper program call
  92 =nix-setuid-helper=.  That program is not setuid-root by default when
  93 you install it; instead you should run a command along these lines
  94 (assuming Guix is installed under /usr/local):
  95
  96   # chown root.root /usr/local/libexec/nix-setuid-helper
  97   # chmod 4755 /usr/local/libexec/nix-setuid-helper
  98
  99 * Contact
 100
 101 GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/.
 102
 103 Please email <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug reports or questions regarding
 104 Guix and its distribution; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for
 105 general issues regarding the GNU system.
 106
 107 Join #guix on irc.freenode.net.
 108
 109 * Guix & Nix
 110
 111 GNU Guix is based on [[https://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]].  It implements the same
 112 package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code.
 113 Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described
 114 below.
 115
 116 Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
 117 and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language.  GNU Guix relies
 118 on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
 119
 120 Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the
 121 features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL,
 122 Unicode, libraries, etc.)  And it means that we have a general-purpose
 123 language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages
 124 (EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages.  This broadens what
 125 can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them.
 126
 127 Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
 128 daemon to perform operations on the store.  At the lowest level, Nix
 129 “derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
 130 the store.  Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
 131 by the daemon to perform the build.  Thus, Guix derivations can use
 132 derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa).
 133
 134 With Nix and the [[https://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at
 135 the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
 136 Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
 137 composition and builders.  Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is
 138 written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code,
 139 but exposes all the API as Scheme.
 140
 141 * Related software
 142
 143   - [[https://nixos.org][Nix, Nixpkgs, and NixOS]], functional package manager and associated
 144     software distribution, are the inspiration of Guix
 145   - [[https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/][GNU Stow]] builds around the idea of one directory per prefix, and a
 146     symlink tree to create user environments
 147   - [[https://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~arnej/store/storedoc_6.html][STORE]] shares the same idea
 148   - [[https://live.gnome.org/OSTree/][GNOME's OSTree]] allows bootable system images to be built from a
 149     specified set of packages
 150   - The [[https://www.gnu.org/s/gsrc/][GNU Source Release Collection]] (GSRC) is a user-land software
 151     distribution; unlike Guix, it relies on core tools available on the
 152     host system