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This manual documents Guix version VERSION.

Copyright (C) 2012 Ludovic Courtès

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License.''

Guix
****

This document describes Guix version VERSION.

Introduction
************

Guix is a functional package management tool.  Package management consists in all the activities that relate to building packages from source, honoring the build-time and run-time dependencies on packages, installing packages in user environments, upgrading installed packages to new versions or rolling back to a previous set, removing unused software packages, etc.

The term functional refers to a specific package management discipline.  In Guix, the package build and installation process is seen as a function, in the mathematical sense: that function takes inputs, such as build scripts, a compiler, and libraries depended on, and returns the installed package.  As a pure function, its result depends solely on its inputs---for instance, it cannot refer to software or scripts that were not explicitly passed as inputs.  A build function always produces the same result when passed a given set of inputs.  Last but not least, a build function cannot alter the system's environment in any way; for instance, it cannot create, modify, or delete files outside of its build and installation directories.  This is achieved by running build processes in dedicated ``chroots'', where only their explicit inputs are visible.

The result of package build functions is cached in the file system, in a special directory called the package store.  In practice, each package is installed in a directory of its own, in the store---by default under /nix/store.  The directory name contains a hash of all the inputs used to build that package; thus, changing an input yields a different directory name.

This approach is the foundation of Guix's salient features: support for transactional package upgrades and rollback, per-user installation, and garbage collection of packages.

Guix has a command-line interface allowing users to build, install, upgrade, and remove packages, as well as a Scheme programming interface. The remainder of this manual describes them.

Programming Interface
*********************

Defining Packages
=================

(guix packages) and (guix build-system)

The Store
=========

(guix store)

Derivations
===========

(guix derivations)

Utilities
*********

Invoking guix-build
===================

Acknowledgments
***************

Guix is based on the Nix package manager, which was designed and implemented by Eelco Dolstra.  Nix pioneered functional package management, and promoted unprecedented features, such as transactional package upgrades and rollbacks, per-user profiles, and referentially transparent build processes.  Without this work, Guix would not exist.

The Nix-based software distributions, Nixpkgs and NixOS, have also been an inspiration for Guix.

GNU Free Documentation License
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