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 2.0.7 or later
  24   - [[http://gnupg.org/][GNU libgcrypt]]
  25   - optionally [[http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/guile-json/][Guile-JSON]], for the 'guix import pypi' command
  26   - optionally [[http://www.gnutls.org][GnuTLS]] compiled with guile support enabled, for HTTPS support
  27     in the 'guix download' command.  Note that 'guix import pypi' requires
  28     this functionality.
  29
  30 Unless `--disable-daemon' was passed, the following packages are needed:
  31
  32   - [[http://sqlite.org/][SQLite 3]]
  33   - [[http://www.bzip.org][libbz2]]
  34   - [[http://gcc.gnu.org][GCC's g++]]
  35
  36 When `--disable-daemon' was passed, you instead need the following:
  37
  38   - [[http://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 "(guix) Installation"
  45
  46 or by checking the [[http://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 ‘HACKING’
  49 file.
  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   - Install the dependencies (see 'Requirements' above) and build tools using
  57     Guix:
  58
  59       guix package --install autoconf automake bzip2 gcc-toolchain gettext \
  60                              guile libgcrypt pkg-config sqlite
  61
  62   - Set the environment variables that Guix recommends you to set during the
  63     package installation process:
  64       ACLOCAL_PATH, CPATH, LIBRARY_PATH, PKG_CONFIG_PATH
  65
  66   - Set the PATH environment variable to refer to the profile:
  67       PATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/bin:$PATH
  68
  69   - Re-run the 'configure' script passing it the option
  70     '--with-libgcrypt-prefix=$HOME/.guix-profile/', as well as
  71     '--localstatedir=/somewhere', where '/somewhere' is the 'localstatedir'
  72     value of the currently installed Guix (failing to do that would lead the
  73     new Guix to consider the store to be empty!).
  74
  75   - Run "make", "make check", and "make install".
  76
  77 * How It Works
  78
  79 Guix does the high-level preparation of a /derivation/.  A derivation is
  80 the promise of a build; it is stored as a text file under
  81 =/gnu/store/xxx.drv=.  The (guix derivations) module provides the
  82 `derivation' primitive, as well as higher-level wrappers such as
  83 `build-expression->derivation'.
  84
  85 Guix does remote procedure calls (RPCs) to the Guix or Nix daemon (the
  86 =guix-daemon= or =nix-daemon= command), which in turn performs builds
  87 and accesses to the Nix store on its behalf.  The RPCs are implemented
  88 in the (guix store) module.
  89
  90 * Installing Guix as non-root
  91
  92 The Guix daemon allows software builds to be performed under alternate
  93 user accounts, which are normally created specifically for this
  94 purpose.  For instance, you may have a pool of accounts in the
  95 =guixbuild= group, and then you can instruct =guix-daemon= to use them
  96 like this:
  97
  98   $ guix-daemon --build-users-group=guixbuild
  99
 100 However, unless it is run as root, =guix-daemon= cannot switch users.
 101 In that case, it falls back to using a setuid-root helper program call
 102 =nix-setuid-helper=.  That program is not setuid-root by default when
 103 you install it; instead you should run a command along these lines
 104 (assuming Guix is installed under /usr/local):
 105
 106   # chown root.root /usr/local/libexec/nix-setuid-helper
 107   # chmod 4755 /usr/local/libexec/nix-setuid-helper
 108
 109 * Contact
 110
 111 GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/.
 112
 113 Please email <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug reports or questions regarding
 114 Guix and its distribution; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for
 115 general issues regarding the GNU system.
 116
 117 Join #guix on irc.freenode.net.
 118
 119 * Guix & Nix
 120
 121 GNU Guix is based on [[http://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]].  It implements the same
 122 package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code.
 123 Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described
 124 below.
 125
 126 Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
 127 and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language.  GNU Guix relies
 128 on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
 129
 130 Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the
 131 features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL,
 132 Unicode, libraries, etc.)  And it means that we have a general-purpose
 133 language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages
 134 (EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages.  This broadens what
 135 can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them.
 136
 137 Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
 138 daemon to perform operations on the store.  At the lowest level, Nix
 139 “derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
 140 the store.  Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
 141 by the daemon to perform the build.  Thus, Guix derivations can use
 142 derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa).
 143
 144 With Nix and the [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at
 145 the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
 146 Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
 147 composition and builders.  Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is
 148 written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code,
 149 but exposes all the API as Scheme.
 150
 151 * Related software
 152
 153   - [[http://nixos.org][Nix, Nixpkgs, and NixOS]], functional package manager and associated
 154     software distribution, are the inspiration of Guix
 155   - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/][GNU Stow]] builds around the idea of one directory per prefix, and a
 156     symlink tree to create user environments
 157   - [[http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~arnej/store/storedoc_6.html][STORE]] shares the same idea
 158   - [[https://live.gnome.org/OSTree/][GNOME's OSTree]] allows bootable system images to be built from a
 159     specified set of packages
 160   - The [[http://www.gnu.org/s/gsrc/][GNU Source Release Collection]] (GSRC) is a user-land software
 161     distribution; unlike Guix, it relies on core tools available on the
 162     host system