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