-*- mode: org -*-
-[[http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/][GNU Guix]] is a purely functional package manager, and associated free
-software distribution, for the [[http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html][GNU system]]. In addition to standard
-package management features, Guix supports transactional upgrades and
-roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and
-garbage collection.
+[[http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/][GNU Guix]] (IPA: /ɡiːks/) is a purely functional package manager, and
+associated free software distribution, for the [[http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html][GNU system]]. In addition
+to standard package management features, Guix supports transactional
+upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user
+profiles, and garbage collection.
It provides [[http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/][Guile]] Scheme APIs, including a high-level embedded
domain-specific languages (EDSLs) to describe how packages are to be
Guix is based on the [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]] package manager.
-* Hacking
+* Requirements
GNU Guix currently depends on the following packages:
- - [[http://gnu.org/software/guile/][GNU Guile 2.0.x]]
- - [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]]
+ - [[http://gnu.org/software/guile/][GNU Guile 2.0.x]], version 2.0.7 or later
- [[http://gnupg.org/][GNU libgcrypt]]
+ - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/make/][GNU Make]]
+ - optionally [[http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/guile-json/][Guile-JSON]], for the 'guix import pypi' command
+ - optionally [[http://www.gnutls.org][GnuTLS]] compiled with guile support enabled, for HTTPS support
+ in the 'guix download' command. Note that 'guix import pypi' requires
+ this functionality.
+
+Unless `--disable-daemon' was passed, the following packages are needed:
+
+ - [[http://sqlite.org/][SQLite 3]]
+ - [[http://www.bzip.org][libbz2]]
+ - [[http://gcc.gnu.org][GCC's g++]]
+
+When `--disable-daemon' was passed, you instead need the following:
+
+ - [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]]
+
+* Installation
+
+See the manual for the installation instructions, either by running
+
+ info -f doc/guix.info "(guix) Installation"
-Optionally, packages from Nixpkgs may be transparently reused from Guix.
-For this to work, you need to have a checkout of the Nixpkgs repository;
-the `--with-nixpkgs' option allows you to let `configure' know where the
-Nixpkgs checkout is.
+or by checking the [[http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#Installation][web copy of the manual]].
- - [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/][Nixpkgs]]
+For information on installation from a Git checkout, please see the section
+"Building from Git" in the manual.
-When building Guix from a checkout, the following packages are also
-required:
+* Installing Guix from Guix
- - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/][GNU Autoconf]]
- - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/][GNU Automake]]
- - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/][GNU Gettext]]
+You can re-build and re-install Guix using a system that already runs Guix.
+To do so:
-The "autoreconf -vi" command can be used to generate the build system
-infrastructure; it reports an error if an inappropriate version of the
-above packages is being used.
+ - Start a shell with the development environment for Guix:
+
+ guix environment guix
+
+ - Re-run the 'configure' script passing it the option
+ '--localstatedir=/somewhere', where '/somewhere' is the 'localstatedir'
+ value of the currently installed Guix (failing to do that would lead the
+ new Guix to consider the store to be empty!).
+
+ - Run "make", "make check", and "make install".
* How It Works
Guix does the high-level preparation of a /derivation/. A derivation is
the promise of a build; it is stored as a text file under
-=/nix/store/xxx.drv=. The (guix derivations) module provides the
+=/gnu/store/xxx.drv=. The (guix derivations) module provides the
`derivation' primitive, as well as higher-level wrappers such as
`build-expression->derivation'.
-Guix does remote procedure calls (RPCs) to the Nix daemon (the
-=nix-worker --daemon= command), which in turn performs builds and
-accesses to the Nix store on its behalf. The RPCs are implemented in
-the (guix store) module.
+Guix does remote procedure calls (RPCs) to the Guix or Nix daemon (the
+=guix-daemon= or =nix-daemon= command), which in turn performs builds
+and accesses to the Nix store on its behalf. The RPCs are implemented
+in the (guix store) module.
+
+* Installing Guix as non-root
+
+The Guix daemon allows software builds to be performed under alternate
+user accounts, which are normally created specifically for this
+purpose. For instance, you may have a pool of accounts in the
+=guixbuild= group, and then you can instruct =guix-daemon= to use them
+like this:
+
+ $ guix-daemon --build-users-group=guixbuild
+
+However, unless it is run as root, =guix-daemon= cannot switch users.
+In that case, it falls back to using a setuid-root helper program call
+=nix-setuid-helper=. That program is not setuid-root by default when
+you install it; instead you should run a command along these lines
+(assuming Guix is installed under /usr/local):
+
+ # chown root.root /usr/local/libexec/nix-setuid-helper
+ # chmod 4755 /usr/local/libexec/nix-setuid-helper
* Contact
HCoop / jackhill / guix / guix.git / blobdiff