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