-*- mode: org -*-
-GNU Guix is Nix[0] from Guile[1]!
+[[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.
-Concretely, it allows Nix package management to be done entirely in
-Scheme. The goal is to investigate whether Scheme, and in particular
-the ability to define EDSLs, would allow it to fulfill the role of the
-Nix language.
+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
+built and composed.
-[0] http://nixos.org/nix/
-[1] http://gnu.org/software/guile/
+A user-land free software distribution for GNU/Linux comes as part of
+Guix.
+Guix is based on the [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]] package manager.
-* Hacking
-Guix currently depends on the following packages:
+* Requirements
- - [[http://gnu.org/software/guile/][GNU Guile 2.0.x]]
- - [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]]
+GNU Guix currently depends on the following packages:
+
+ - [[http://gnu.org/software/guile/][GNU Guile 2.0.x]], version 2.0.5 or later
- [[http://gnupg.org/][GNU libgcrypt]]
-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.
+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"
+
+or by checking the [[http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/guix.html#Installation][web copy of the manual]].
+
+For information on installation from a Git checkout, please see the ‘HACKING’
+file.
- - [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/][Nixpkgs]]
+* Installing Guix from Guix
-When building Guix from a checkout, the following packages are also
-required:
+You can re-build and re-install Guix using a system that already runs Guix.
+To do so:
- - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/][GNU Autoconf]]
- - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/][GNU Automake]]
- - [[http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/][GNU Gettext]]
+ - Install the dependencies (see 'Requirements' above) and build tools using
+ Guix:
-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.
+ guix package --install autoconf automake bzip2 gcc-toolchain gettext \
+ guile libgcrypt pkg-config sqlite
+
+ - Set the environment variables that Guix recommends you to set during the
+ package installation process:
+ ACLOCAL_PATH, CPATH, LIBRARY_PATH, PKG_CONFIG_PATH
+
+ - Set the PATH environment variable to refer to the profile:
+ PATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/bin:$PATH
+
+ - Re-run the 'configure' script passing it the option
+ '--with-libgcrypt-prefix=$HOME/.guix-profile/', as well as
+ '--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.
-* Contact
+* Installing Guix as non-root
-The repository is at <https://gitorious.org/guix/>.
+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
-Please email <ludo@gnu.org> or <nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl>, or
-join #guile or #nixos on irc.freenode.net or `civodul'.
+GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/.
+
+Please email <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug reports or questions regarding
+Guix and its distribution; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for
+general issues regarding the GNU system.
+
+Join #guix on irc.freenode.net.
+
+* Guix & Nix
+
+GNU Guix is based on [[http://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]]. It implements the same
+package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code.
+Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described
+below.
+
+Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
+and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language. GNU Guix relies
+on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
+
+Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the
+features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL,
+Unicode, libraries, etc.) And it means that we have a general-purpose
+language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages
+(EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages. This broadens what
+can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them.
+
+Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
+daemon to perform operations on the store. At the lowest level, Nix
+“derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
+the store. Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
+by the daemon to perform the build. Thus, Guix derivations can use
+derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa).
+
+With Nix and the [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at
+the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
+Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
+composition and builders. Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is
+written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code,
+but exposes all the API as Scheme.
* Related software
HCoop / jackhill / guix / guix.git / blobdiff