112 lines
4.8 KiB
Org Mode
112 lines
4.8 KiB
Org Mode
-*- mode: org -*-
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[[http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/][GNU Guix]] (IPA: /ɡiːks/) is a purely functional package manager, and
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associated free software distribution, for the [[http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html][GNU system]]. In addition
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to standard package management features, Guix supports transactional
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upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user
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profiles, and garbage collection.
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It provides [[http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/][Guile]] Scheme APIs, including a high-level embedded
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domain-specific languages (EDSLs) to describe how packages are to be
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built and composed.
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A user-land free software distribution for GNU/Linux comes as part of
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Guix.
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Guix is based on the [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]] package manager.
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* Hacking
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GNU Guix currently depends on the following packages:
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- [[http://gnu.org/software/guile/][GNU Guile 2.0.x]]
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- [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]]
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- [[http://gnupg.org/][GNU libgcrypt]]
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Optionally, packages from Nixpkgs may be transparently reused from Guix.
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For this to work, you need to have a checkout of the Nixpkgs repository;
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the `--with-nixpkgs' option allows you to let `configure' know where the
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Nixpkgs checkout is.
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- [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/][Nixpkgs]]
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When building Guix from a checkout, the following packages are also
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required:
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- [[http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/][GNU Autoconf]]
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- [[http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/][GNU Automake]]
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- [[http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/][GNU Gettext]]
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The "autoreconf -vi" command can be used to generate the build system
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infrastructure; it reports an error if an inappropriate version of the
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above packages is being used.
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* How It Works
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Guix does the high-level preparation of a /derivation/. A derivation is
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the promise of a build; it is stored as a text file under
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=/nix/store/xxx.drv=. The (guix derivations) module provides the
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`derivation' primitive, as well as higher-level wrappers such as
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`build-expression->derivation'.
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Guix does remote procedure calls (RPCs) to the Nix daemon (the
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=nix-worker --daemon= command), which in turn performs builds and
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accesses to the Nix store on its behalf. The RPCs are implemented in
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the (guix store) module.
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* Contact
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GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/.
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Please email <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug reports or questions regarding
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Guix and its distribution; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for
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general issues regarding the GNU system.
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Join #guix on irc.freenode.net.
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* Guix & Nix
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GNU Guix is based on [[http://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]]. It implements the same
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package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code.
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Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described
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below.
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Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library
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and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language. GNU Guix relies
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on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter.
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Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the
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features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL,
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Unicode, libraries, etc.) And it means that we have a general-purpose
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language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages
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(EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages. This broadens what
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can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them.
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Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’
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daemon to perform operations on the store. At the lowest level, Nix
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“derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in
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the store. Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted
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by the daemon to perform the build. Thus, Guix derivations can use
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derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa).
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With Nix and the [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at
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the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash.
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Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package
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composition and builders. Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is
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written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code,
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but exposes all the API as Scheme.
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* Related software
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- [[http://nixos.org][Nix, Nixpkgs, and NixOS]], functional package manager and associated
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software distribution, are the inspiration of Guix
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- [[http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/][GNU Stow]] builds around the idea of one directory per prefix, and a
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symlink tree to create user environments
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- [[http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~arnej/store/storedoc_6.html][STORE]] shares the same idea
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- [[https://live.gnome.org/OSTree/][GNOME's OSTree]] allows bootable system images to be built from a
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specified set of packages
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- The [[http://www.gnu.org/s/gsrc/][GNU Source Release Collection]] (GSRC) is a user-land software
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distribution; unlike Guix, it relies on core tools available on the
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host system
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