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GNU Guix Reference Manual

1. mkdir guile 2 0 7 tar xz xz N build bootstrap guile sh bash a y guile bootstrap 2 0 drv N module import guile builder gcc bootstrap 0 guile builder Ww module import drv 5 module import drv module import compiled guile builder 4 j gcc 4 7 2 tar xz drv gcc bootstrap 0 drv The figure above shows the very beginning of the dependency graph of the distribution corresponding to the package definitions of the gnu packages bootstrap module At this level of detail things are slightly complex First Guile itself consists of an ELF executable along with many source and compiled Scheme files that are dynamically loaded when it runs This gets stored in the guile 2 0 7 tar xz tarball shown in this graph This tarball is part of Guix s source distribution and gets inserted into the store with add to store see Section 5 3 The Store page 46 But how do we write a derivation that unpacks this tarball and adds it to the store To solve this problem the guile bootstrap 2 0 drv derivation the first one that gets built uses bash as its builder which runs build bootstrap guile sh which in turn calls tar to unpack the tarball Thus bash tar xz and mkdir are statically linked binaries also part of the Guix source distribution whose sole purpose is to allow the Guile tarball to be unpacked Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 1
2. Return an object representing the executable store item name that runs gexp guile is the Guile package used to execute that script and modules is the list of modules visible to that script This is the declarative counterpart of gexp gt script gexp gt file name exp Monadic Procedure Return a derivation that builds a file name containing exp The resulting file holds references to all the dependencies of exp or a subset thereof Scheme file name exp Scheme Procedure Return an object representing the Scheme file name that contains exp This is the declarative counterpart of gexp gt file text file name text Monadic Procedure Return as a monadic value a derivation that builds a text file containing all of text text may list in addition to strings objects of any type that can be used in a gexp packages derivations local file objects etc The resulting store file holds references to all these This variant should be preferred over text file anytime the file to create will ref erence items from the store This is typically the case when building a configuration file that embeds store file names like this define profile sh Return the name of a shell script in the store that initializes the PATH environment variable text file profile sh export PATH coreutils bin grep bin sed bin n In this example the resulting gnu store profile sh file will references coreutils grep and
3. use service modules networking ssh use package modules admin Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 86 operating system host name komputilo timezone Europe Berlin locale en US UTF 8 Assuming dev sdX is the target hard disk and root is the label of the target root file system bootloader grub configuration device dev sdX file systems cons file system device root title Label mount point type ext4 Abase file systems This is where user accounts are specified The root account is implicit and is initially created with the empty password users cons user account name alice comment Bob s sister group users Adding the account to the wheel group makes it a sudoer Adding it to audio and video allows the user to play sound and access the webcam supplementary groups wheel audio video home directory home alice base user accounts Globally installed packages packages cons tcpdump Abase packages Add services to the baseline a DHCP client and an SSH server services cons dhcp client service lsh service port number 2222 4base services This example should be self describing Some of the fields defined above such as host name and bootloader are mandatory Others such as packages and services can be omitted in which case they get a default value The packages field lis
4. Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 114 Adefault theme Scheme Variable This is the default GRUB theme used by the operating system with a fancy back ground image displaying the GNU and Guix logos 7 2 13 Invoking guix system Once you have written an operating system declaration as seen in the previous section it can be instantiated using the guix system command The synopsis is guix system options action file file must be the name of a file containing an operating system declaration action specifies how the operating system is instantiate Currently the following values are sup ported reconfigure Build the operating system described in file activate it and switch to it This effects all the configuration specified in file user accounts system services global package list setuid programs etc It also adds GRUB menu entry for the new OS configuration and moves entries for older configurations to a submenu unless no grub is passed It is highly recommended to run guix pull once before you run guix system reconfigure for the first time see Section 3 6 Invoking guix pull page 24 Failing to do that you would see an older version of Guix once reconfigure has completed build Build the operating system s derivation which includes all the configuration files and programs needed to boot and run the system This action does not actually install anything init Populate the given directory with all the files n
5. Currently the graft and the package it replaces bash fixed and bash in the example above must have the exact same name and version fields This restriction mostly comes from the fact that grafting works by patching files including binary files directly Other restrictions may apply for instance when adding a graft to a package providing a shared library the original shared library and its replacement must have the same SONAME and be binary compatible 7 5 Package Modules From a programming viewpoint the package definitions of the GNU distribution are pro vided by Guile modules in the gnu packages name space see Section Modules in GNU Guile Reference Manual For instance the gnu packages emacs module exports a variable named emacs which is bound to a lt package gt object see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 The gnu packages module name space is automatically scanned for packages by the command line tools For instance when running guix package i emacs all the gnu packages modules are scanned until one that exports a package object whose name is emacs is found This package search facility is implemented in the gnu packages module Users can store package definitions in modules with different names e g ny packages emacs These package definitions will not be visible by default Thus users can invoke commands such as guix package and guix build have to be used with the e option so
6. Mark the current package for installation Mark the current package for deletion Mark the current package for upgrading Mark all obsolete packages for upgrading Edit the definition of the curent package go to its location This is similar to guix edit command see Section 6 2 Invoking guix edit page 64 but for opening a package recipe in the current Emacs instance Execute actions on the marked packages A generation list buffer additionally provides the following bindings RET i List packages installed in the current generation Describe marked generations display available information in a generation info buffer Switch profile to the current generation Mark the current generation for deletion with prefix mark all generations Execute actions on the marked generations i e delete generations Run Ediff see The Ediff Manual on package outputs installed in the 2 marked generations With prefix argument run Ediff on manifests of the marked gen erations Run Diff see Section Diff Mode in The GNU Emacs Manual on package outputs installed in the 2 marked generations With prefix argument run Diff on manifests of the marked generations List package outputs added to the latest marked generation comparing with another marked generation List package outputs removed from the latest marked generation comparing with another marked generation Chapter 4 Emacs Interface 31 4 2 4 Inf
7. dd if guixsd usb install 0 9 0 x86 64 of dev sdX Access to dev sdX usually requires root privileges Once this is done you should be able to reboot the system and boot from the USB stick The latter usually requires you to get in the BIOS boot menu where you can choose to boot from the USB stick Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 84 7 1 3 Preparing for Installation Once you have successfully booted the image on the USB stick you should end up with a root prompt Several console T l Ys are configured and can be used to run commands as root TTY2 shows this documentation browsable using the Info reader commands see Section Help in Info An Introduction To install the system you would 1 Configure the network by running ifconfig eno1 up amp amp dhclient eno1 to get an automatically assigned IP address from the wired network interface controller or using the ifconfig command The system automatically loads drivers for your network interface controllers Setting up network access is almost always a requirement because the image does not contain all the software and tools that may be needed 2 Unless this has already been done you must partition and then format the target partition Preferably assign partitions a label so that you can easily and reliably refer to them in file system declarations see Section 7 2 3 File Systems page 91 This is typically done using the L option of mkfs ext4 and related command
8. exist in two forms as an in memory representation both on the client and daemon side and as files in the store whose name end in drv these files are referred to as derivation Chapter 5 Programming Interface 48 paths Derivations paths can be passed to the build derivations procedure to perform the build actions they prescribe see Section 5 3 The Store page 46 The guix derivations module provides a representation of derivations as Scheme objects along with procedures to create and otherwise manipulate derivations The lowest level primitive to create a derivation is the derivation procedure derivation store name builder args outputs out Scheme Procedure hash f z hash algo 20 recursive 20 inputs env vars system current system references graphs 20 allowed references 1 leaked env vars 1 local build 1 substitutable t Build a derivation with the given arguments and return the resulting lt derivation gt object When hash and hash algo are given a fixed output derivation is created i e one whose result is known in advance such as a file download If in addition recursive is true then that fixed output may be an executable file or a directory and hash must be the hash of an archive containing this output When references graphs is true it must be a list of file name store path pairs In that case the reference graph of each store path is exported in
9. 148 L EE 27 F file like objects 0 cece eee eee niii 57 Ditmwat lsleenlslje dc tatapa KA AEE E dep 89 functional package management 2 G expresslOB 22 Ze veg ue AA 53 garbage collector 0 sees eee 22 POM aed aged 66 GNU Build System 0 0 0000 38 EE 125 UE E E 113 Guix System Distribution 2 82 GUD EEN 2 82 H hackage sznoiebspeneRhheRAUs DU ESSERE eR DE 67 hosts file ere ehm er nece 89 HTTPS certificates 0 00 eee eee eee 109 I importing packages 00 000008 66 incompatibility of locale data 97 init Syste ee cen Dae ne eme Peri wel eae eR UE 123 initial RAM disk initrd naaa 112 initrd initial RAM dek 112 integrity checkiug 23 integrity of the store 23 L locale EE 96 locale definition 96 locale name s2 ses wade Pee ee eae ie eee ees 97 locales when not on GuixSD T1 lowering of high level objects in gexps 54 58 LUKS vritetnt E Se dE Eed 93 M mapped deviceg cece eee eects 93 MONA WEE 50 monadic functions 0 c eee eee eee 50 monadie val es ccc eg nese e ere ed Hele ed 50 multiple output packages 000 21 Concept Index N name service cache daemon e 99 name service Switch 110 network management 101 non determinism in package builds 80 normalized codeset in locale
10. If gateway is true it must be a string specifying the default network gateway wicd service wicd wicd Scheme Procedure Return a service that runs Wicd a network management daemon that aims to simplify wired and wireless networking This service adds the wicd package to the global profile providing several commands to interact with the daemon and configure networking wicd client a graphical user interface and the wicd cli and wicd curses user interfaces ntp service ntp ntp name service 4ntp servers Scheme Procedure Return a service that runs the daemon from ntp the Network Time Protocol package The daemon will keep the system clock synchronized with that of servers Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 102 Antp servers Scheme Variable List of host names used as the default NTP servers tor service config file tor tor Scheme Procedure Return a service to run the Tor anonymous networking daemon The daemon runs as the tor unprivileged user It is passed config file a file like object with an additional User tor line Run man tor for information about the configuration file bitlbee service bitlbee bitlbee interface 127 0 0 1 Scheme Procedure port 6667 extra settings Return a service that runs BitlBee a daemon that acts as a gateway between IRC and chat networks The daemon will listen to the interface corresponding to the IP address specified in interface on port 127 0 0 1 means
11. load additional modules so the initrd can be used as a QEMU guest with para virtualized I O drivers When volatile root is true the root file system is writable but any changes to it are lost The initrd is automatically populated with all the kernel modules necessary for file systems and for the given options However additional kernel modules can be listed in extra modules They will be added to the initrd and loaded at boot time in the order in which they appear Needless to say the initrds we produce and use embed a statically linked Guile and the initialization program is a Guile program That gives a lot of flexibility The expression gt initrd procedure builds such an initrd given the program to run in that initrd Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 113 expression gt initrd exp guile guile static stripped Monadic Procedure name guile initrd modules Return a derivation that builds a Linux initrd a gzipped cpio archive containing guile and that evaluates exp a G expression upon booting All the derivations referenced by exp are automatically copied to the initrd modules is a list of Guile module names to be embedded in the initrd 7 2 12 GRUB Configuration The operating system uses GNU GRUB as its boot loader see Section Overview in GNU GRUB Manual It is configured using grub configuration declarations This data type is exported by the gnu system grub module and described below grub conf
12. or invariant sections and 2 were thus incorporated prior to November 1 2008 The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC BY SA on the same site at any time before August 1 2009 provided the MMC is eligible for relicensing Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License 147 ADDENDUM How to use this License for your documents To use this License in a document you have written include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page Copyright C year your name 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 If you have Invariant Sections Front Cover Texts and Back Cover Texts replace the with Texts line with this with the Invariant Sections being list their titles with the Front Cover Texts being list and with the Back Cover Texts being list If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts or some other combination of the three merge those two alternatives to suit the situation If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under y
13. package name gtk version 2 24 20 If we also wanted GTK 3 8 2 this would be packaged as define public gtk 3 8 package name gtk version 3 8 2 1 6 4 Synopses and Descriptions As we have seen before each package in GNU Guix includes a synopsis and a description see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 Synopses and descriptions are important They are what guix package search searches and a crucial piece of information to help users determine whether a given package suits their needs Consequently packagers should pay attention to what goes into them Synopses must start with a capital letter and must not end with a period They must not start with a or the which usually does not bring anything for instance prefer File frobbing tool over A tool that frobs files The synopsis should say what the package is e g Core GNU utilities file text shell or what it is used for e g the synopsis for GNU grep is Print lines matching a pattern Keep in mind that the synopsis must be meaningful for a very wide audience For exam ple Manipulate alignments in the SAM format might make sense for a seasoned bioin formatics researcher but might be fairly unhelpful or even misleading to a non specialized audience It is a good idea to come up with a synopsis that gives an idea of the application domain of the package In this example this might give something l
14. procedure 8 4 2 Modules Guile modules that are meant to be used on the builder side must live in the guix build name space They must not refer to other Guix or GNU modules However it is OK for a host side module to use a build side module Modules that deal with the broader GNU system should be in the gnu name space rather than guix 8 4 3 Data Types and Pattern Matching The tendency in classical Lisp is to use lists to represent everything and then to browse them by hand using car cdr cadr and co There are several problems with that style notably the fact that it is hard to read error prone and a hindrance to proper type error reports Guix code should define appropriate data types for instance using define record type rather than abuse lists In addition it should use pattern matching via Guile s ice 9 match module especially when matching lists 8 4 4 Formatting Code When writing Scheme code we follow common wisdom among Scheme programmers In general we follow the Riastradh s Lisp Style Rules This document happens to describe the conventions mostly used in Guile s code too It is very thoughtful and well written so please do read it Some special forms introduced in Guix such as the substitute macro have special indentation rules These are defined in the dir locals el1 file which Emacs automatically uses If you do not use Emacs please make sure to let your editor know th
15. that they know where to find the package Better yet they can use the L option of these commands to make those modules visible see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 or define the GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable This environment variable makes it easy to extend or customize the distribution and is honored by all the user interfaces Note that packages under the gnu packages module name space are not necessarily GNU pack ages This module naming scheme follows the usual Guile module naming convention gnu means that these modules are distributed as part of the GNU system and packages identifies modules that define packages 10 Note that the file name and module name must match For instance the my packages emacs module must be stored in a my packages emacs scm file relative to the load path specified with load path or GUIX PACKAGE PATH See Section Modules and the File System in GNU Guile Reference Manual for details Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 127 GUIX PACKAGE PATH Environment Variable This is a colon separated list of directories to search for package modules Directories listed in this variable take precedence over the distribution s own modules The distribution is fully bootstrapped and self contained each package is built based solely on other packages in the distribution The root of this dependency graph is a small set of bootstrap binaries provided by the gnu packages bootstrap
16. which must be a valid GNU triplet such as mips64el linux gnu see Section Configuration Names in GNU Configure and Build System with source source Use source as the source of the corresponding package source must be a file name or a URL as for guix download see Section 6 3 Invoking guix download page 65 The corresponding package is taken to be one specified on the command line whose name matches the base of source e g if source is src guile 2 0 10 tar gz the corresponding package is guile Likewise the version string is inferred from source in the previous example it s 2 0 10 This option allows users to try out versions of packages other than the one provided by the distribution The example below downloads ed 1 7 tar gz from a GNU mirror and uses that as the source for the ed package guix build ed with source mirror gnu ed ed 1 7 tar gz As a developer with source makes it easy to test release candidates guix build guile with source guile 2 0 9 219 elbb7 tar xz or to build from a checkout in a pristine environment git clone git git sv gnu org guix git guix build guix with source guix no grafts Do not graft packages In practice this means that package updates available as grafts are not applied See Section 7 4 Security Updates page 125 for more information on grafts derivations d Return the derivation paths not the output paths of the given packages ro
17. 120 service parameters 0 eee eee eee 120 Service EE 120 set current state ec eee ee eee 52 Slim S rwviC6 uc ance lee deeper geb oe 103 SLate DOpsissrieese hp Rie PP Saved Gahan des 52 EE 52 static networking service 101 Suglog Sergice 6 kkk 100 151 textfil ici net ease EE paa gor Fuer 53 text fil i lico exa vakere dede Y dus 58 LOP SOrVIlCOlih2ieegedel d RUNI E 102 udeu seruilce eene 101 udisks service eese eese 107 Ve e liia pee bebes pred 107 yalid path 22 rastne arani aa ERR EF 47 Wicd ServiC6 leise i A Ei RESALE 101 With monad iis caus sara dew andar ea pa dae dra eter St X xorg configuration file 104 xorg start command sss esses 104
18. Document as given on its Title Page then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence Preserve the network location if any given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document and likewise the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on These may be placed in the History section You may omit a network location for a work that was published at least four years before the Document itself or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission For any section Entitled Acknowledgements or Dedications Preserve the Title of the section and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and or dedications given therein Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document unaltered in their text and in their titles Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles Delete any section Entitled Endorsements Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled Endorsements or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers If the Modified Version includes new front matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document you may at your option designate some or all of these
19. Hurd Reference Manual Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 94 mapped device Data Type Objects of this type represent device mappings that will be made when the system boots up Source This string specifies the name of the block device to be mapped such as dev sda3 target This string specifies the name of the mapping to be established For example specifying my partition will lead to the creation of the dev mapper my partition device type This must be a mapped device kind object which specifies how source is mapped to target luks device mapping Scheme Variable This defines LUKS block device encryption using the cryptsetup command from the same named package This relies on the dm crypt Linux kernel module 7 2 5 User Accounts User accounts and groups are entirely managed through the operating system declaration They are specified with the user account and user group forms user account name alice group users supplementary groups wheel allow use of sudo etc audio sound card video video devices such as webcams cdrom the good ol CD ROM comment Bob s sister home directory home alice When booting or upon completion of guix system reconfigure the system ensures that only the user accounts and groups specified in the operating system declaration exist and with the specified properties Thus account or group creations or modifications made by directly invoking commands such
20. Library weighs in at more than 60 MiB Thus as a user keeping all the debugging info of all the installed programs is usually not an option Yet space savings should not come at the cost of an impediment to debugging especially in the GNU system which should make it easier for users to exert their computing freedom see Chapter 7 GNU Distribution page 82 Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 125 Thankfully the GNU Binary Utilities Binutils and GDB provide a mechanism that allows users to get the best of both worlds debugging information can be stripped from the binaries and stored in separate files GDB is then able to load debugging information from those files when they are available see Section Separate Debug Files in Debugging with GDB The GNU distribution takes advantage of this by storing debugging information in the lib debug sub directory of a separate package output unimaginatively called debug see Section 3 4 Packages with Multiple Outputs page 21 Users can choose to install the debug output of a package when they need it For instance the following command installs the debugging information for the GNU C Library and for GNU Guile guix package i glibc debug guile debug GDB must then be told to look for debug files in the user s profile by setting the debug file directory variable consider setting it from the gdbinit file see Section Startup in Debugging with GDB gdb set debug file directory g
21. The Nix based software distributions Nixpkgs and NixOS have also been an inspiration for Guix GNU Guix itself is a collective work with contributions from a number of people See the AUTHORS file in Guix for more information on these fine people The THANKS file lists people who have helped by reporting bugs taking care of the infrastructure providing artwork and themes making suggestions and more thank you Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License 140 Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License Version 1 3 3 November 2008 Copyright c 2000 2001 2002 2007 2008 Free Software Foundation Inc http fsf org Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document but changing it is not allowed 0 PREAMBLE The purpose of this License is to make a manual textbook or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it with or without modifying it either commercially or non commercially Secondarily this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others This License is a kind of copyleft which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense It complements the GNU General Public License which is a copyleft license designed for free software We have design
22. Then come the first stage Binutils and GCC built as pseudo cross tools i e with target equal to host They are used to build libc Thanks to this cross build trick this libc is guaranteed not to hold any reference to the initial tool chain From there the final Binutils and GCC are built GCC uses 1d from the final Binutils and links programs against the just built libc This tool chain is used to build the other packages used by Guix and by the GNU Build System Guile Bash Coreutils etc And voil At this point we have the complete set of build tools that the GNU Build System expects These are in the Afinal inputs variable of the gnu packages commencement module and are implicitly used by any package that uses gnu build system see Section 5 2 Build Systems page 42 Building the Bootstrap Binaries Because the final tool chain does not depend on the bootstrap binaries those rarely need to be updated Nevertheless it is useful to have an automated way to produce them should an update occur and this is what the gnu packages make bootstrap module provides The following command builds the tarballs containing the bootstrap binaries Guile Binutils GCC libc and a tarball containing a mixture of Coreutils and other basic command line tools guix build bootstrap tarballs The generated tarballs are those that should be referred to in the gnu packages bootstrap module mentioned at the beginning of this section
23. This data type represents build machines the daemon may offload builds to The important fields are name The remote machine s host name system The remote machine s system type e g x86 64 linux user The user account to use when connecting to the remote machine over SSH Note that the SSH key pair must not be passphrase protected to allow non interactive logins A number of optional fields may be specified port Port number of the machine s SSH server default 22 private key The SSH private key file to use when connecting to the machine Currently offloading uses GNU Ish as its SSH client see Section Invoking Ish in GNU 1sh Manual Thus the key file here must be an Ish key file This may change in the future though parallel builds The number of builds that may run in parallel on the machine 1 by default speed A relative speed factor The offload scheduler will tend to prefer ma chines with a higher speed factor features A list of strings denoting specific features supported by the machine An example is kvm for machines that have the KVM Linux modules and Chapter 2 Installation 8 corresponding hardware support Derivations can request features by name and they will be scheduled on matching build machines The guix command must be in the search path on the build machines since offloading works by invoking the guix archive and guix build commands In addition the Guix modules must be in
24. a backtrace locals to display local variable values and more generally inspect the program s state See Section Debug Commands in GNU Guile Reference Manual for a list of available debugging commands Note that all the actions above except build and init rely on KVM support in the Linux Libre kernel Specifically the machine should have hardware virtualization support the corresponding KVM kernel module should be loaded and the dev kvm device node must exist and be readable and writable by the user and by the daemon s build users Once you have built configured re configured and re re configured your GuixSD instal lation you may find it useful to list the operating system generations available on disk and that you can choose from the GRUB boot menu list generations List a summary of each generation of the operating system available on disk in a human readable way This is similar to the list generations option of guix package see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 Optionally one can specify a pattern with the same syntax that is used in guix package list generations to restrict the list of generations displayed For instance the following command displays generations up to 10 day old guix system list generations 10d The guix system command has even more to offer The following sub commands allow you to visualize how your system services relate to each other extension graph Emit in Dot Graphviz for
25. about the available substitutes see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 This allows it to profile disk usage of store items that are not even on disk only available remotely The available options are substitute urls urls Use substitute information from urls See client substitute urls page 63 map file file Write to file a graphical map of disk usage as a PNG file For the example above the map looks like this store profile InsfS gibc 2 221 sae r9nb7 gcc 4 8 4 lib MI 16065 b7hq7 attr 2 4 46 336 ri571 ad 2252 B 514 p5sba gmp 6 0 080 M 2550 l58kf coreutile g 23 14202 This option requires that Guile Charting be installed and visible in Guile s module search path When that is not the case guix size fails as it tries to load it system system s system Consider packages for system e g x86 64 linux 6 9 Invoking guix graph Packages and their dependencies form a graph specifically a directed acyclic graph DAG It can quickly become difficult to have a mental model of the package DAG so the guix graph command is here to provide a visual representation of the DAG guix graph emits a DAG representation in the input format of Graphviz so its output can be passed directly to Graphviz s dot command for instance The general syntax is guix graph options package For example the following command generates a PDF file representing the package DAG for the GNU Core Utilities showing its build time
26. advanced queries The garbage collection options are as follows collect garbage min C min Collect garbage i e unreachable gnu store files and sub directories This is the default operation when no option is specified Chapter 3 Package Management 23 When min is given stop once min bytes have been collected min may be a number of bytes or it may include a unit as a suffix such as MiB for mebibytes and GB for gigabytes see Section Block size in GNU Coreutils When min is omitted collect all the garbage delete d Attempt to delete all the store files and directories specified as arguments This fails if some of the files are not in the store or if they are still live list failures List store items corresponding to cached build failures This prints nothing unless the daemon was started with cache failures see Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 clear failures Remove the specified store items from the failed build cache Again this option only makes sense when the daemon is started with cache failures Otherwise it does nothing list dead Show the list of dead files and directories still present in the store i e files and directories no longer reachable from any root list live Show the list of live store files and directories In addition the references among existing store files can be queried references referrers List the references respectively the refer
27. along with each Opaque copy or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer network location from which the general network using public has access to download using public standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document free of added material If you use the latter option you must take reasonably prudent steps when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy directly or through your agents or retailers of that edition to the public It is requested but not required that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document 4 MODIFICATIONS You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it In addition you must do these things in the Modified Version A Use in the Title Page and on the covers if any a title distinct from that of the Document and from those of previous versions which should if there were any Appendix A GNU Fre
28. and other supporting files Chapter 3 Package Management 22 Sometimes it is more appropriate to separate the various types of files produced from a single source package into separate outputs For instance the GLib C library used by GTK and related packages installs more than 20 MiB of reference documentation as H TML pages To save space for users who do not need it the documentation goes to a separate output called doc To install the main GLib output which contains everything but the documentation one would run guix package i glib The command to install its documentation is guix package i glib doc Some packages install programs with different dependency footprints For instance the WordNet package install both command line tools and graphical user interfaces GUIs The former depend solely on the C library whereas the latter depend on Tcl Tk and the underlying X libraries In this case we leave the command line tools in the default output whereas the GUIs are in a separate output This allows users who do not need the GUIs to save space The guix size command can help find out about such situations see Section 6 8 Invoking guix size page 71 guix graph can also be helpful see Section 6 9 Invoking guix graph page 72 There are several such multiple output packages in the GNU distribution Other conven tional output names include lib for libraries and possibly header files bin for stand alone programs and de
29. be setuid root The setuid programs field of an operating system declaration contains a list of G expressions denoting the names of programs to be setuid root see Section 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System page 85 For instance the passwd program which is part of the Shadow package can be designated by this G expression see Section 5 6 G Expressions page 53 string append shadow bin passwd A default set of setuid programs is defined by the 4setuid programs variable of the gnu system module Asetuid programs Scheme Variable A list of G expressions denoting common programs that are setuid root The list includes commands such as passwd ping su and sudo Under the hood the actual setuid programs are created in the run setuid programs directory at system activation time The files in this directory refer to the real binaries which are in the store 7 2 9 X 509 Certificates Web servers available over HTTPS that is HTTP over the transport layer security mech anism TLS send client programs an X 509 certificate that the client can then use to authenticate the server To do that clients verify that the server s certificate is signed by a so called certificate authority CA But to verify the CA s signature clients must have first acquired the CA s certificate Web browsers such as GNU IceCat include their own set of CA certificates such that they are able to verify CA signatures out of
30. between references to the native build of a package that can run on the host versus references to cross builds of a package To that end the plays the same role as but is a reference to a native package build 3 The term stratum in this context was coined by Manuel Serrano et al in the context of their work on Hop Oleg Kiselyov who has written insightful essays and code on this topic refers to this kind of code generation as staging Chapter 5 Programming Interface 55 gexp gt derivation vi begin mkdir output system string append coreutils bin 1n WEEN string append emacs bin emacs string append output bin vi target mips64el linux In the example above the native build of coreutils is used so that 1n can actually run on the host but then the cross compiled build of emacs is referenced The syntactic form to construct gexps is summarized below exp Scheme Syntax gexp exp Scheme Syntax Return a G expression containing exp exp may contain one or more of the following forms obj ungexp obj Introduce a reference to obj obj may have one of the supported types for example a package or a derivation in which case the ungexp form is replaced by its output file name e g gnu store coreutils 8 22 If obj is a list it is traversed and references to supported objects are substituted similarly If obj is another gexp its contents are inserted and i
31. cee nne 65 6 5 Invoking guix Amport cee eee eee eee 66 6 6 Invoking guix refresh esee 68 6 7 Invoking euizLimnt ne 70 6 8 Invoking guix size TA 6 9 Invoking guix graph sss 72 6 10 Invoking guix environment esee 75 6 11 Invoking guix publish eee 78 6 12 Invoking guix challenge 79 6 43 Invoking guix container sse ee 80 GNU Distribution iiiosseesx rk Er eh es 82 7 1 System Installation s 82 Ll Ludatiohssic nasse ee UL EELER QUE 82 7 1 2 USB Stick Installation 0 00 c cee ene eee 83 7 1 3 Preparing for Installation 0 0 e cece eee eee 84 7 1 4 Proceeding with the Installat on naana 84 7 1 5 Building the Installation Image 85 7 2 System Configuration 0 0 cece eee n 85 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System 0c cee eee eee 85 7 2 2 operating system Reference eese 89 1 2 9 Pile Systems ncessrzebeuRex4 pee RRERBRARERSNSLC SE 91 7 2 4 Mapped Devieces e 93 7 2 5 User Accounts 94 1 2 6 locales ot peda aaeat teehee Eb edi ex ER e RE Es 96 1 2 6 1 Locale Data Compatibility Considerations 97 G24 Servicesslueiereeenes ac se E ARR LER AG Pa e PRU E d e 97 T2701 Base SerVicesi s iocis keel p Fare eases 98 7 2 7 2 Networking Services 0 eee e eee eee 101 7 2 7 8 X Window 0 ccc ccc een eee eee e ees 103 7 2 7 4 Desktop Services 000 c eee e nets 104 7 2 7 5 Database Service 108 7 2
32. colord a system service with a D Bus interface to manage the color profiles of input and output devices such as screens and scanners It is notably used by the GNOME Color Manager graphical tool See the colord web site for more information geoclue application name allowed t system 71 Scheme Procedure users Return an configuration allowing an application to access GeoClue location data name is the Desktop ID of the application without the desktop part If allowed is true the application will have access to location information by default The boolean system value indicates that an application is a system component or not Finally users is a list of UIDs of all users for which this application is allowed location info access An empty users list means that all users are allowed Astandard geoclue applications Scheme Variable The standard list of well known GeoClue application configurations granting author ity to GNOME s date and time utility to ask for the current location in order to set the time zone and allowing the Firefox IceCat and Epiphany web browsers to re quest location information Firefox and Epiphany both query the user before allowing a web page to know the user s location geoclue service colord colord whitelist Scheme Procedure wifi geolocation url https location services mozilla com v1 geolocate key geoclue submit data 1 wifi submission url https location ser
33. currently only available on 1686 and x86 64 For information on porting to other architectures or kernels See Section 7 8 Porting page 134 Building this distribution is a cooperative effort and you are invited to join See Chapter 8 Contributing page 135 for information about how you can help 7 1 System Installation This section explains how to install the Guix System Distribution on a machine The Guix package manager can also be installed on top of a running GNU Linux system see Chapter 2 Installation page 3 7 1 1 Limitations As of version 0 9 0 the Guix System Distribution GuixSD is not production ready It may contain bugs and lack important features Thus if you are looking for a stable production system that respects your freedom as a computer user a good solution at this point is to 1 The term free here refers to the freedom provided to users of that software Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 83 consider one of more established GNU Linux distributions We hope you can soon switch to the GuixSD without fear of course In the meantime you can also keep using your distribution and try out the package manager on top of it see Chapter 2 Installation page 3 Before you proceed with the installation be aware of the following noteworthy limitations applicable to version 0 9 0 e The installation process does not include a graphical user interface and requires fa miliarity with GNU Linux see the follow
34. from the Python Package Index Information is taken from the JSON formatted description available at pypi python org and usually in cludes all the relevant information including package dependencies The command below imports meta data for the itsdangerous Python package guix import pypi itsdangerous gem Import meta data from RubyGems Information is taken from the JSON formatted description available at rubygems org and includes most relevant information including runtime dependencies There are some caveats how ever The meta data doesn t distinguish between synopses and descriptions so the same string is used for both fields Additionally the details of non Ruby dependencies required to build native extensions is unavailable and left as an exercise to the packager The command below imports meta data for the rails Ruby package guix import gem rails 1 This functionality requires Guile JSON to be installed See Section 2 2 Requirements page 4 This functionality requires Guile JSON to be installed See Section 2 2 Requirements page 4 Chapter 6 cpan cran nix hackage Utilities 67 Import meta data from MetaCPAN Information is taken from the JSON formatted meta data provided through MetaCPAN s API and includes most relevant information such as module dependencies License information should be checked closely If Perl is available in the store then the corelist utility will be used to filter core m
35. have side effects or depend on the current state of the store The former is inconvenient the connection to the build daemon has to be carried around in all those functions making it impossible to compose functions that do not take that parameter with functions that do The latter can be problematic since store operations have side effects and or depend on external state they have to be properly sequenced This is where the guix monads module comes in This module provides a framework for working with monads and a particularly useful monad for our uses the store monad Monads are a construct that allows two things associating context with values in our case the context is the store and building sequences of computations here computa tions include accesses to the store Values in a monad values that carry this additional context are called monadic values procedures that return such values are called monadic procedures Consider this normal procedure define sh symlink store Return a derivation that symlinks the bash executable let drv package derivation store bash out derivation gt output path drv sh string append out bin bash build expression gt derivation store sh symlink sh Zoutput Using guix monads and guix gexp it may be rewritten as a monadic function define sh symlink Same but return a monadic value mlet Astore monad drv package gt derivation bas
36. installed packages whose name matches a regexp Also see the do not upgrade option below Note that this upgrades package to the latest version of packages found in the distribution currently installed To update your distribution you should regularly run guix pull see Section 3 6 Invoking guix pull page 24 do not upgrade regexp When used together with the upgrade option do not upgrade any packages whose name matches a regexp For example to upgrade all packages in the current profile except those containing the substring emacs guix package upgrade do not upgrade emacs manifest file m file Create a new generation of the profile from the manifest object returned by the Scheme code in file This allows you to declare the profile s contents rather than constructing it through a sequence of install and similar commands The advantage is that file can be put under version control copied to different machines to reproduce the same profile and so on Chapter 3 Package Management 17 file must return a manifest object which is roughly a list of packages use package modules guile emacs packages gt manifest list emacs guile 2 0 Use a specific package output list guile 2 0 debug roll back Roll back to the previous generation of the profile i e undo the last transac tion When combined with options such as install roll back occurs before any other actions When rol
37. is only useful to Guix developers 3 7 Invoking guix archive The guix archive command allows users to export files from the store into a single archive and to later import them In particular it allows store files to be transferred from one machine to another machine s store For example to transfer the emacs package to a machine connected over SSH one would run 1 Under the hood guix pull updates the config guix latest symbolic link to point to the latest Guix and the guix command loads code from there Chapter 3 Package Management 25 guix archive export r emacs ssh the machine guix archive import Similarly a complete user profile may be transferred from one machine to another like this guix archive export r readlink f guix profile ssh the machine guix archive import However note that in both examples all of emacs and the profile as well as all of their dependencies are transferred due to r regardless of what is already available in the target machine s store The missing option can help figure out which items are missing from the target s store Archives are stored in the Nix archive or Nar format which is comparable in spirit to tar but with a few noteworthy differences that make it more appropriate for our purposes First rather than recording all Unix meta data for each file the Nar format only mentions the file type regular directory or symbolic link Unix permissi
38. may be a comma separated list of updaters Currently updater may be one of gnu the updater for GNU packages elpa the updater for ELPA packages cran the updater for CRAN packages pypi the updater for PyPI packages For instance the following commands only checks for updates of Emacs pack ages hosted at elpa gnu org and updates of CRAN packages guix refresh type elpa cran gnu packages statistics scm 819 13 r testthat would be upgraded from 0 10 0 gnu packages emacs scm 856 13 emacs auctex would be upgraded from 11 88 6 t In addition guix refresh can be passed one or more package names as in this example pre inst env guix refresh u emacs idutils gcc 4 8 4 The command above specifically updates the emacs and idutils packages The select option would have no effect in this case When considering whether to upgrade a package it is sometimes convenient to know which packages would be affected by the upgrade and should be checked for compatibility For this the following option may be used when passing guix refresh one or more package names list updaters L List available updaters and exit see type above list dependent 1 List top level dependent packages that would need to be rebuilt as a result of upgrading one or more packages Chapter 6 Utilities 70 Be aware that the list dependent option only approximates the rebuilds that would be required as a result of an upgrade More rebuilds might be r
39. more information see Section 7 2 13 Invoking guix system page 114 The name enoi is for the first on board Ethernet controller The interface name for an Ethernet controller that is in the first slot of the first PCI bus for instance would be enpisO Use ifconfig a to list all the available network interfaces Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 85 This command may trigger downloads or builds of missing packages which can take some time Once that command has completed and hopefully succeeded you can run reboot and boot into the new system The root password in the new system is initially empty other users passwords need to be initialized by running the passwd command as root unless your configuration specifies otherwise see user account password page 95 Join us on guix on the Freenode IRC network or on guix devel gnu org to share your experience good or not so good 7 1 5 Building the Installation Image The installation image described above was built using the guix system command specif ically guix system disk image image size 850MiB gnu system install scm See Section 7 2 13 Invoking guix system page 114 for more information See gnu system install scm in the source tree for more information about the installation image 7 2 System Configuration The Guix System Distribution supports a consistent whole system configuration mechanism By that we mean that all aspects of the global system configur
40. name hello version 2 10 source origin method url fetch uri string append mirror gnu hello hello version tar gz sha256 base32 Ossilwpaf7plaswqqjwigppsgb5fyh99vdlb9kzl7c91ng89ndq1i build system gnu build system arguments configure flags enable silent rules inputs gawk gawk synopsis Hello GNU world An example GNU package description Guess what GNU Hello prints Chapter 5 Programming Interface 38 home page http www gnu org software hello license gpl34 Without being a Scheme expert the reader may have guessed the meaning of the various fields here This expression binds variable hello to a package object which is essentially a record see Section SRFI 9 in GNU Guile Reference Manual This package object can be inspected using procedures found in the guix packages module for instance package name hello returns surprisel hello With luck you may be able to import part or all of the definition of the package you are interested in from another repository using the guix import command see Section 6 5 Invoking guix import page 66 In the example above hello is defined into a module of its own gnu packages hello Technically this is not strictly necessary but it is convenient to do so all the packages defined in modules under gnu packages are automatically known to the command line tools see Section 7 5 Package Modules p
41. not explicitly passed as inputs A build function always produces the same result when passed a given set of inputs It 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 isolated environments or containers 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 store see Section 5 3 The Store page 46 Each package is installed in a directory of its own in the store by default under gnu 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 upgrade and rollback per user installation and garbage collection of packages see Section 3 1 Features page 13 Guix has a command line interface which allows users to build install upgrade and remove packages as well as a Scheme programming interface Last but not least Guix is used to build a distribution of the GNU system with many GNU and non GNU free software packages The Guix System Distribution or GNU GuixSD takes advantage of the core properties of Guix at the system level With GuixSD users declare all aspects of the operating system configuration
42. not found the build system looks for Setup lhs instead Which Haskell compiler is used can be specified with the haske11 parameter which defaults to ghc emacs build system Scheme Variable This variable is exported by guix build system emacs It implements an instal lation procedure similar to the one of Emacs own packaging system see Section Packages in The GNU Emacs Manual It first creates the package autoloads el file then it byte compiles all Emacs Lisp files Differently from the Emacs packaging system the Info documentation files are moved to the standard documentation directory and the dir file is deleted Each package is installed in its own directory under share emacs site lisp guix d Lastly for packages that do not need anything as sophisticated a trivial build system is provided It is trivial in the sense that it provides basically no support it does not pull any implicit inputs and does not have a notion of build phases trivial build system Scheme Variable This variable is exported by guix build system trivial This build system requires a builder argument This argument must be a Scheme expression that builds the package s output s as with build expression gt derivation see Section 5 4 Derivations page 47 5 3 The Store Conceptually the store is where derivations that have been successfully built are stored by default under gnu store Sub directories in the store are referr
43. of output names and packages In the latter case the list denotes store items that the result is allowed to refer to Any reference to another store item will lead to a build error The other arguments are as for derivation see Section 5 4 Derivations page 47 Chapter 5 Programming Interface 57 The local file plain file computed file program file and scheme file pro cedures below return file like objects That is when unquoted in a G expression these objects lead to a file in the store Consider this G expression 4 system string append glibc sbin nscd f local file tmp my nscd conf The effect here is to intern tmp my nscd conf by copying it to the store Once expanded for instance via gexp gt derivation the G expression refers to that copy under gnu store thus modifying or removing the file in tmp does not have any effect on what the G expression does plain file can be used similarly it differs in that the file content is directly passed as a string local file file name recursive 7t Scheme Procedure Return an object representing local file file to add to the store this object can be used in a gexp file will be added to the store under name by default the base name of file When recursive is true the contents of file are added recursively if file designates a flat file and recursive is true its contents are added and its permission bits are kept This is the declarativ
44. of the boot service which produces the boot script The boot script is what the initial RAM disk runs when booting etc service type Scheme Variable The type of the etc service This service can be extended by passing it name file tuples such as list issue plain file issue Welcome n P In this example the effect would be to add an etc issue file pointing to the given file setuid program service type Scheme Variable Type for the setuid program service This service collects lists of executable file names passed as gexps and adds them to the set of setuid root programs on the system see Section 7 2 8 Setuid Programs page 108 Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 123 profile service type Scheme Variable Type of the service that populates the system profile i e the programs under run current system profile Other services can extend it by passing it lists of packages to add to the system profile 7 2 14 4 dmd Services The gnu services dmd provides a way to define services managed by GNU dmd which is GuixSD initialization system the first process that is started when the system boots aka PID 1 see Section Introduction in GNU dmd Manual Services in dmd can depend on each other For instance the SSH daemon may need to be started after the syslog daemon has been started which in turn can only happen once all the file systems have been mounted The simple operating system defined ear
45. or further copying of the copies you make or distribute However you may accept compensation in exchange for copies If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3 You may also lend copies under the same conditions stated above and you may publicly display copies 3 COPYING IN QUANTITY If you publish printed copies or copies in media that commonly have printed covers of the Document numbering more than 100 and the Document s license notice requires Cover Texts you must enclose the copies in covers that carry clearly and legibly all these Cover Texts Front Cover Texts on the front cover and Back Cover Texts on the back cover Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible You may add other material on the covers in addition Copying with changes limited to the covers as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly you should put the first ones listed as many as fit reasonably on the actual cover and continue the rest onto adjacent pages If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100 you must either include a machine readable Transparent copy
46. package which may be insufficient when needing a specific output of a multiple output package install from file file f file Install the package that the code within file evaluates to As an example file might contain a definition like this see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 use modules guix guix build system gnu guix licenses Chapter 3 Package Management 16 package name hello version 2 10 source origin method url fetch uri string append mirror gnu hello hello version tar gz sha256 base32 Ossilwpaf7plaswqqjwigppsg5f yh99vd1b9kz17c91lng89ndqli build system gnu build system synopsis Hello GNU world An example GNU package description Guess what GNU Hello prints home page http www gnu org software hello license gp13 Developers may find it useful to include such a package scm file in the root of their project s source tree that can be used to test development snapshots and create reproducible development environments see Section 6 10 Invoking guix environment page 75 remove package r package Remove the specified packages As for install each package may specify a version number and or output name in addition to the package name For instance r glibc debug would remove the debug output of glibc upgrade regexp u regexp Upgrade all the installed packages If one or more regexps are specified upgrade only
47. packages such as libc or Bash since basically the whole distribution would need to be rebuilt Using pre built binaries helps see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 but deployment may still take more time than desired To address that Guix implements grafts a mechanism that allows for fast deployment of critical updates without the costs associated with a whole distribution rebuild The idea is to rebuild only the package that needs to be patched and then to graft it onto packages explicitly installed by the user and that were previously referring to the original package The cost of grafting is typically very low and order of magnitudes lower than a full rebuild of the dependency chain Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 126 For instance suppose a security update needs to be applied to Bash Guix developers will provide a package definition for the fixed Bash say bash fixed in the usual way see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 Then the original package definition is augmented with a replacement field pointing to the package containing the bug fix define bash package name bash replacement bash fixed From there on any package depending directly or indirectly on Bash that is installed will automatically be rewritten to refer to bash fixed instead of bash This grafting process takes time proportional to the size of the package but expect less than a minute for an average package on a recent machine
48. place Here are some of them 2 6 1 Locales Packages installed via Guix will not use the host system s locale data Instead you must first install one of the locale packages available with Guix and then define the GUIX LOCPATH environment variable guix package i glibc locales export GUIX LOCPATH HOME guix profile lib locale Note that the glibc locales package contains data for all the locales supported by the GNU libc and weighs in at around 110 MiB Alternately the glibc utf8 locales is smaller but limited to a few UTF 8 locales The GUIX_LOCPATH variable plays a role similar to LOCPATH see Section Locale Names in The GNU C Library Reference Manual There are two important differences though 1 GUIX LOCPATH is honored only by Guix s libc and not by the libc provided by foreign distros Thus using GUIX LOCPATH allows you to make sure the the foreign distro s programs will not end up loading incompatible locale data 2 libc suffixes each entry of GUIX_LOCPATH with X Y where X Y is the libc version e g 2 22 This means that should your Guix profile contain a mixture of programs linked against different libc version each libc version will only try to load locale data in the right format This is important because the locale data format used by different libc versions may be incompatible Chapter 2 Installation 12 2 6 2 X11 Fonts The majority of graphical applications use Fontconfig to locate and load font
49. ready to use provided Guix is installed system wide which is the case by default So if that is what you re using you can happily skip this section and read about the fun stuff If you re not yet a happy user of GuixSD a little bit of setup is needed To be able to use guix el you need to install the following packages e GNU Emacs version 24 3 or later e Geiser version 0 3 or later it is used for interacting with the Guile process e magit popup library You already have this library if you use Magit 2 1 0 or later This library is an optional dependency it is required only for M x guix command see Section 4 3 Emacs Popup Interface page 33 When it is done guix el may be configured by requiring a special guix init file i e by adding the following code into your init file see Section Init File in The GNU Emacs Manual add to list load path path to directory with guix el require guix init nil t So the only thing you need to figure out is where the directory with elisp files for Guix is placed It depends on how you installed Guix e Ifit was installed by a package manager of your distribution or by a usual configure amp amp make amp amp make install command sequence then elisp files are placed in a standard directory with Emacs packages usually it is usr share emacs site lisp which is already in 1oad path so there is no need to add that directory there e If you used a binary install
50. say the C library are installed in the profile then search paths will suggest setting these variables to profile include and profile lib re spectively The typical use case is to define these environment variables in the shell eval guix package search paths kind may be one of exact prefix or suffix meaning that the returned environment variable definitions will either be exact settings or prefixes or Chapter 3 Package Management 18 suffixes of the current value of these variables When omitted kind defaults to exact profile profile p profile Use profile instead of the user s default profile verbose Produce verbose output In particular emit the environment s build log on the standard error port bootstrap Use the bootstrap Guile to build the profile This option is only useful to distribution developers In addition to these actions guix package supports the following options to query the current state of a profile or the availability of packages search regexp s regexp List the available packages whose name synopsis or description matches regexp Print all the meta data of matching packages in recutils format see GNU recutils manual This allows specific fields to be extracted using the recsel command for in stance guix package s malloc recsel p name version name glibc version 2 17 name libgc version 7 2alpha6 Similarly to show the name of all the packages availabl
51. see Eshell The Emacs Shell It works the same way as other completions do Just press TAB when your intuition tells you And here are some examples where pressing TAB may complete something guix paTAB guix package TAB guix package TAB guix package i geiTAB guix build L tmTAB guix build syTAB guix build system iTAB guix system recTAB guix lint checkers syTAB guix lint checkers synopsis desTAB 4 7 Development By default when you open a Scheme file guix devel mode will be activated if you don t want it set guix devel activate mode to nil This minor mode provides the following key bindings C c k Copy the name of the current Guile module into kill ring guix devel copy module as kill C c u Use the current Guile module Often after opening a Scheme file you want to use a module it defines so you switch to the Geiser REPL and write use some module there You may just use this command instead guix devel use module C c b Build a package defined by the current variable definition The building pro cess is run in the current Geiser REPL If you modified the current package Chapter 4 Emacs Interface 36 definition don t forget to reevaluate it before calling this command for exam ple with C M x see Section To eval or not to eval in Geiser User Manual guix devel build package definition C c s Build a source derivation of the package defined by the current variable defini tion Thi
52. stable identifier MELPA selected by the melpa identifier The structure of the guix import code is modular It would be useful to have more importers for other package formats and your help is welcome here see Chapter 8 Con tributing page 135 6 6 Invoking guix refresh The primary audience of the guix refresh command is developers of the GNU software distribution By default it reports any packages provided by the distribution that are outdated compared to the latest upstream version like this guix refresh gnu packages gettext scm 29 13 gettext would be upgraded from 0 18 1 1 to 0 18 2 1 gnu packages glib scm 77 12 glib would be upgraded from 2 34 3 to 2 37 0 It does so by browsing each package s FTP directory and determining the highest version number of the source tarballs therein The command knows how to update specific types of packages GNU packages ELPA packages etc see the documentation for type below The are many packages though for which it lacks a method to determine whether a new upstream release is available However the mechanism is extensible so feel free to get in touch with us to add a new method When passed update it modifies distribution source files to update the version num bers and source tarball hashes of those packages recipes see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 This is achieved by downloading each package s latest source tarball and its as sociated OpenPGP signatu
53. than a single user and group The container shares its store with the host system As with the vm action see guix system vm page 114 additional file systems to be shared between the host and container can be specified using the share and expose options guix system container my config scm expose HOME share HOME tmp exchange Note This option requires Linux libre 3 19 or newer options can contain any of the common build options provided by guix build see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 In addition options can contain one of the following Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 116 system system s system Attempt to build for system instead of the host s system type This works as per guix build see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 derivation d Return the derivation file name of the given operating system without building anything image size size For the vm image and disk image actions create an image of the given size size may be a number of bytes or it may include a unit as a suffix see Section Block size in GNU Coreutils on error strategy Apply strategy when an error occurs when reading file strategy may be one of the following nothing special Report the error concisely and exit This is the default strategy backtrace Likewise but also display a backtrace debug Report the error and enter Guile s debugger From there you can run commands such as bt to get
54. that is bound within body to the value of the service of that type See Section 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System page 85 for an example This is a shorthand for map lambda service services Next comes the programming interface for service types This is something you want to know when writing new service definitions but not necessarily when simply looking for ways to customize your operating system declaration service type Data Type This is the representation of a service type see Section 7 2 14 2 Service Types and Services page 118 name This is a symbol used only to simplify inspection and debugging extensions A non empty list of lt service extension gt objects see below compose default If this is f then the service type denotes services that cannot be extended i e services that do not receive values from other services Otherwise it must be a one argument procedure The procedure is called by fold services and is passed a list of values collected from extensions It must return a value that is a valid parameter value for the service instance extend default If this is services of this type cannot be extended Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 122 Otherwise it must be a two argument procedure fold services calls it passing it the service s initial value as the first argument and the result of applying compose to the extension values as the second argument See S
55. the beginning of the body of the text The publisher means any person or entity that distributes copies of the Document to the public A section Entitled XYZ means a named subunit of the Document whose title either is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in another language Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below such as Acknowledgements Dedications Endorsements or History To Preserve the Title of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a section Entitled XYZ according to this definition The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that this License applies to the Document These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to be included by reference in this License but only as regards disclaiming warranties any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no effect on the meaning of this License 2 VERBATIM COPYING Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License 142 You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium either commercially or noncommercially provided that this License the copyright notices and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading
56. 33 Once guile bootstrap 2 0 drv is built we have a functioning Guile that can be used to run subsequent build programs Its first task is to download tarballs containing the other pre built binaries this is what the tar xz drv derivations do Guix modules such as ftp client scm are used for this purpose The module import drv derivations import those modules in a directory in the store using the original layout The module import compiled drv derivations compile those modules and write them in an output directory with the right layout This corresponds to the modules argument of build expression gt derivation see Section 5 4 Derivations page 47 Finally the various tarballs are unpacked by the derivations gcc bootstrap 0 drv glibc bootstrap 0 drv etc at which point we have a working C tool chain Building the Build Tools Bootstrapping is complete when we have a full tool chain that does not depend on the pre built bootstrap tools discussed above This no dependency requirement is verified by checking whether the files of the final tool chain contain references to the gnu store directories of the bootstrap inputs The process that leads to this final tool chain is described by the package definitions found in the gnu packages commencement module The first tool that gets built with the bootstrap binaries is GNU Make which is a prerequisite for all the following packages From there Findutils and Diffutils get built
57. 7 Invoking guix archive page 24 wget q 0 http hydra gnu org nar git 2 5 0 guix archive x tmp git diff ur no dereference gnu store git 2 5 0 tmp git This command shows the difference between the files resulting from the local build and the files resulting from the build on hydra gnu org see Section Overview in Comparing and Merging Files The diff command works great for text files When binary files differ a better option is Diffoscope a tool that helps visualize differences for all kinds of files Once you ve done that work you can tell whether the differences are due to a non deterministic build process or to a malicious server We try hard to remove sources of non determinism in packages to make it easier to verify substitutes but of course this is a process one that involves not just Guix but a large part of the free software community In the meantime guix challenge is one tool to help address the problem If you are writing packages for Guix you are encouraged to check whether hydra gnu org and other substitute servers obtain the same build result as you did with guix challenge package where package is a package specification such as guile 2 0 or glibc debug The general syntax is guix challenge options packages The one option that matters is substitute urls urls Consider urls the whitespace separated list of substitute source URLs to com pare to 6 13 Invoking guix con
58. 7 6 Web Services 0 0 ccc ccc cece e 108 ii 7 2 7 7 Various Services ne 108 7 2 8 Setuid Droerams essere 108 7 2 9 X 509 Certificates eh 109 7 2 10 Name Service Switch 110 7 2 11 Initial RAM Disk 112 7 2 12 GRUB Configuration e 113 7 2 13 Invoking guix sevstemn esee 114 7 2 14 Defining Herviceg eee 117 7 2 14 1 Service Composition 00 cece eee eee eee 117 7 2 14 2 Service Types and Services 0 00 e eee eee 118 7 2 14 3 Service Reference 0 cece ee eee 120 7 2 14 4 dmd Bervices ccc cece eect eens 123 7 3 Installing Debugging Hie 124 TA Security Updates Sie ENEE ER eese ek E dan 125 7 5 Package Modules ees 126 7 6 Packaging Guidelines 0 cece eee eee eee ees 127 7 6 1 Software Freedom 128 7 6 2 Package Naming 0 eee e eee eee eee eee eae 128 7 6 3 Version Numbers cece e eee e eee eee 128 7 6 4 Synopses and Descriptions 0c eee eee eee 129 7 6 5 Python Module 130 7 6 6 Perl Modules 0 00 c cece eee eee 130 CeO THONUS m E m 130 CC Bootstrapping ed be PR RR Re eda EECH 131 Preparing to Use the Bootstrap Baies 132 Building the Build Tools 133 Building the Bootstrap Baies 133 7 8 Porting to a New Platform 134 B EENEG oou ea de AR RARO RR d 135 8 1 Building from Ou 135 8 2 Running Guix Before It Is Installed 005 135 8 3 The Perfect Getup 0c cece cece eee e eee eenes 136 BA Co
59. GNU Guix Reference Manual Using the GNU Guix Functional Package Manager The GNU Guix Developers Edition 0 9 0 4 November 2015 Copyright c 2012 2013 2014 2015 Ludovic Court s Copyright c 2013 2014 Andreas Enge Copyright 2013 Nikita Karetnikov Copyright 2015 Mathieu Lirzin Copyright 2014 Pierre Antoine Rault Copyright 2015 Taylan Ulrich Bayirlh Kammer 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 Table of Contents ELLEN Ge Pm 1 l Fuesent vive 6 e ea Cav oar IR aen 2 2 Installations esso REX o ERROR Rr ob dde d 3 2 1 Binary Installation i en 3 2 2 R quirements i D rp AE E PRADA REC EAS 4 2 3 Running the Test Suite 5 2 4 Setting Up the Daemon ee 5 2 4 1 Build Environment Setup 0 cece eee eee eee eee 5 2 4 2 Using the Offload acht 6 2 5 Invoking guix daemon cece eee nee nes 8 2 6 Application Setup i 2 0 1 keelen ee pe rac UE VA ee eer RR ud 11 2 0 2 E FONS EE 12 3 Package Management 13 94 BeaU ressosseenenssrenitehr RR EE ed bestes qu ee ERI dean s demas 13 3 2 Invoking guix package eee eee een e nes 14 3 3 Substitutes i04 cc
60. GUILE LOAD PATH on the build machine you can check whether this is the case by running lsh build machine guile c use modules guix config There s one last thing to do once machines scm is in place As explained above when offloading files are transferred back and forth between the machine stores For this to work you first need to generate a key pair on each machine to allow the daemon to export signed archives of files from the store see Section 3 7 Invoking guix archive page 24 guix archive generate key Each build machine must authorize the key of the master machine so that it accepts store items it receives from the master guix archive authorize lt master public key txt Likewise the master machine must authorize the key of each build machine All the fuss with keys is here to express pairwise mutual trust relations between the master and the build machines Concretely when the master receives files from a build machine and vice versa its build daemon can make sure they are genuine have not been tampered with and that they are signed by an authorized key 2 5 Invoking guix daemon The guix daemon program implements all the functionality to access the store This in cludes launching build processes running the garbage collector querying the availability of a build result etc It is normally run as root like this guix daemon build users group guixbuild For details on how to set it up see
61. Keep the build tree of failed builds Thus if a build fail its build tree is kept under tmp in a directory whose name is shown at the end of the build log This is useful when debugging build issues dry run n Do not build the derivations fallback When substituting a pre built binary fails fall back to building packages locally substitute urls urls Consider urls the whitespace separated list of substitute source URLs overrid ing the default list of URLs of guix daemon see guix daemon URLs page 9 This means that substitutes may be downloaded from urls provided they are signed by a key authorized by the system administrator see Section 3 3 Sub stitutes page 20 no substitutes Do not use substitutes for build products That is always build things locally instead of allowing downloads of pre built binaries see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 no build hook Do not attempt to offload builds via the daemon s build hook see Section 2 4 2 Daemon Offload Setup page 6 That is always build things locally instead of offloading builds to remote machines Chapter 6 Utilities 64 max silent time seconds When the build or substitution process remains silent for more than seconds terminate it and report a build failure timeout seconds Likewise when the build or substitution process lasts for more than seconds terminate it and report a build failure By default there is no timeout This beh
62. Section 2 4 Setting Up the Daemon page 5 By default guix daemon launches build processes under different UIDs taken from the build group specified with build users group In addition each build process is run in a chroot environment that only contains the subset of the store that the build process depends on as specified by its derivation see Chapter 5 Programming Interface page 37 plus a set of specific system directories By default the latter contains dev and dev pts Furthermore on GNU Linux the build environment is a container in addition to having its own file system tree it has a separate mount name space its own PID name space network name space etc This helps achieve reproducible builds see Section 3 1 Features page 13 When the daemon performs a build on behalf of the user it creates a build directory un der tmp or under the directory specified by its TMPDIR environment variable this directory is shared with the container for the duration of the build Be aware that using a directory other than tmp can affect build results for example with a longer directory name a build process that uses Unix domain sockets might hit the name length limitation for sun path which it would otherwise not hit Chapter 2 Installation 9 The build directory is automatically deleted upon completion unless the build failed and the client specified keep failed see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 The foll
63. Still here Then perhaps by now you ve started to wonder when do we reach a fixed point That is an interesting question The answer is unknown but if you would like to investigate further and have significant computational and storage resources to do so then let us know Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 134 7 8 Porting to a New Platform As discussed above the GNU distribution is self contained and self containment is achieved by relying on pre built bootstrap binaries see Section 7 7 Bootstrapping page 131 These binaries are specific to an operating system kernel CPU architecture and appli cation binary interface ABI Thus to port the distribution to a platform that is not yet supported one must build those bootstrap binaries and update the gnu packages bootstrap module to use them on that platform Fortunately Guix can cross compile those bootstrap binaries When everything goes well and assuming the GNU tool chain supports the target platform this can be as simple as running a command like this one guix build target armv5tel linux gnueabi bootstrap tarballs For this to work the glibc dynamic linker procedure in gnu packages bootstrap must be augmented to return the right file name for libc s dynamic linker on that platform likewise system linux architecture in gnu packages linux must be taught about the new platform Once these are built the gnu packages bootstrap module needs to be updated to ref
64. a data ded 127 SUDSUIGUUES ss onere aoe enn ee 9 14 20 SH gepennt rae Aen geb 91 swap deviceg cece eee e cece e eens 90 system configuration sse eese 85 System BEE eg deg Se reegt te ees 118 system SCPVICES cse pte sia rastni net EENS OF T Texinfo markup in package descriptions 129 NEG EEN 109 V verifiable builds bre ier rene Ir eat 79 virtual machine 114 usb 114 W Wied ossbhiiniibressRui5Rdikbfiiced bi decks 101 X seggion een 103 X 509 certificates 0 ccc eee eee 109 Programming Index Programming Index add btext to store oae ne emn avali S rviCe 135 9 e rhe Ra BP RREDRS B base initrd 24g m 9 nep one aia Gates britlbe e serviCe ele d eens betes build derivatiohs 2 2 9 ies pe Ryu build expression gt derivation C close connectioln o eed niron ienei pede et TE ae TEE eeh EU Ge ER console keymap service sss sss Current State 0 ikee deg See See Euer D le e e ra pe REF Ra derivatiOIn Jlcsesssseremresesegoeekemet res PEE aE dhcp client service s sees E elogind service ciesssoac bae nee ey eh expression 2initrd oi scenes seas Ree F fold Services i eser eR a EA RS G Seoclue applicartion sess geoclue service si eee a ER ade Serp zderivation eese Bexp oflle 2 amp besa ey ebiad n aM eed gexp script 150 BOXD To ixd ee i elec eased ayer eres apii 56 Suilz publisb Se
65. achine which then proceeds with the build upon success the output s of the build are copied back to the initial machine The etc guix machines scm file typically looks like this 2 Jf your machine uses the systemd init system dropping the prefix lib systemd system guix daemon service file in etc systemd system will ensure that guix daemon is automatically started 3 Mostly because while the set of files that appear in the chroot s dev is fixed most of these files can only be created if the host has them Chapter 2 Installation 7 list build machine name eightysix example org system x86 64 linux user bob speed 2 incredibly fast build machine name meeps example org system mips64el linux user alice private key string append getenv HOME 1sh identity for guix In the example above we specify a list of two build machines one for the x86 64 architecture and one for the mips64e1 architecture In fact this file is not surprisingly a Scheme file that is evaluated when the offload hook is started Its return value must be a list of build machine objects While this example shows a fixed list of build machines one could imagine say using DNS SD to return a list of potential build machines discovered in the local network see Section Introduction in Using Avahi in Guile Scheme Programs The build machine data type is detailed below build machine Data Type
66. acs Interface 34 setq guix find file function org open file add to list org file apps png sxiv s guix dot default arguments Command line arguments to run dot command If you change an output format for example into Tpdf you also need to change the next variable guix dot file name function Function used to define a name of the generated graph file Default name is tmp guix emacs graph XXXXXX png So for example if you want to generate and open a PDF file in your Emacs you may change the settings like this defun my guix pdf graph tmp my current guix graph pdf setq guix dot default arguments Tpdf guix dot file name function my guix pdf graph 4 4 Guix Prettify Mode GNU Guix also comes with guix prettify el It provides a minor mode for abbreviating H store file names by replacing hash sequences of symbols with gnu store T2f54nfp6gihz873w8z3gfcahOh4nl9p foo 0 1 gnu store foo 0 1 Once you set up guix el see Section 4 1 Emacs Initial Setup page 27 the following commands become available M x guix prettify mode Enable disable prettifying for the current buffer M x global guix prettify mode Enable disable prettifying globally To automatically enable guix prettify mode globally on Emacs start add the following line to your init file global guix prettify mode If you want to enable it only for specific major modes add it to the mo
67. age 126 There are a few points worth noting in the above package definition e The source field of the package is an lt origin gt object see Section 5 1 2 origin Refer ence page 41 for the complete reference Here the url fetch method from guix download is used meaning that the source is a file to be downloaded over FTP or HTTP The mirror gnu prefix instructs url fetch to use one of the GNU mirrors defined in guix download The sha256 field specifies the expected SHA256 hash of the file being downloaded It is mandatory and allows Guix to check the integrity of the file The base32 form introduces the base32 representation of the hash You can obtain this information with guix download see Section 6 3 Invoking guix download page 65 and guix hash see Section 6 4 Invoking guix hash page 65 When needed the origin form can also have a patches field listing patches to be applied and a snippet field giving a Scheme expression to modify the source code e The build system field specifies the procedure to build the package see Section 5 2 Build Systems page 42 Here gnu build system represents the familiar GNU Build System where packages may be configured built and installed with the usual configure amp amp make amp amp make check amp amp make install command sequence e The arguments field specifies options for the build system see Section 5 2 Build Sys tems page 42 Here it is interp
68. ailable guix com mands When you select an option you ll be prompted for a value in the minibuffer Many values have completions so don t hesitate to press TAB key Multiple values for example packages or lint checkers should be separated by commas After specifying all options and switches for a command you may choose one of the available actions The following default actions are available for all commands e Run the command in the Guix REPL It is faster than running guix command directly in shell as there is no need to run another guile process and to load required modules there e Run the command in a shell buffer You can set guix run in shell function vari able to fine tune the shell buffer you want to use e Add the command line to the kill ring see Section Kill Ring in The GNU Emacs Manual Several commands guix graph guix system dmd graph and guix system extension graph also have a View graph action which allows you to view a generated graph using dot command specified by guix dot program variable By default a PNG file will be saved in tmp directory and will be opened directly in Emacs This behavior may be changed with the following variables guix find file function Function used to open a generated graph If you want to open a graph in an external program you can do it by modifying this variable for example you can use a functionality provided by the Org Mode see The Org Manual Chapter 4 Em
69. ally run through the store scheme guile user gt enter store monad store monad guile user 1 gt package gt derivation hello 2 lt derivation gnu store hello 2 9 drv gt gt store monad guile user 1 gt text file foo Hello 3 gnu store foo store monad guile user 1 gt q scheme guile user gt Note that non monadic values cannot be returned in the store monad REPL The main syntactic forms to deal with monads in general are provided by the guix monads module and are described below with monad monad body Scheme Syntax Evaluate any gt gt or return forms in body as being in monad return val Scheme Syntax Return a monadic value that encapsulates val gt gt mval mproc Scheme Syntax Bind monadic value mval passing its contents to monadic procedures mproc There can be one mproc or several of them as in this example run with state with monad 4state monad gt gt return 1 lambda x return 1 x lambda x return 2 x gt some state gt 4 some state mlet monad var mval body Scheme Syntax mlet monad var mval body Scheme Syntax Bind the variables var to the monadic values mval in body The form var gt val binds var to the normal value val as per let mlet is to mlet what let is to let see Section Local Bindings in GNU Guile Reference Manual This operation is common
70. and Guix takes care of instantiating that configuration in a reproducible stateless fashion See Chapter 7 GNU Distribution page 82 l Guix is pronounced like geeks or iks using the international phonetic alphabet IPA Chapter 2 Installation 3 2 Installation GNU Guix is available for download from its website at http www gnu org software guix This section describes the software requirements of Guix as well as how to install it and get ready to use it Note that this section is concerned with the installation of the package manager which can be done on top of a running GNU Linux system If instead you want to install the complete GNU operating system see Section 7 1 System Installation page 82 2 1 Binary Installation This section describes how to install Guix on an arbitrary system from a self contained tarball providing binaries for Guix and for all its dependencies This is often quicker than installing from source which is described in the next sections The only requirement is to have GNU tar and Xz Installing goes along these lines 1 Download the binary tarball from ftp alpha gnu org gnu guix guix binary 0 9 0 system tar x where system is x86 64 linux for an x86 64 machine already running the kernel Linux and so on 2 As root run cd tmp tar warning no timestamp xf guix binary 0 9 0 system tar xz mv var guix var amp amp mv gnu This creates gnu store s
71. art the service when it stops for instance when the un derlying process dies start stop default const f The start and stop fields refer to dmd s facilities to start and stop pro cesses see Section Service De and Constructors in GNU dmd Manual They are given as G expressions that get expanded in the dmd configu ration file see Section 5 6 G Expressions page 53 documentation A documentation string as shown when running deco doc service name where service name is one of the symbols in provision see Section In voking deco in GNU dmd Manual dmd root service type Scheme Variable The service type for the dmd root service i e PID 1 This is the service type that extensions target when they want to create dmd services see Section 7 2 14 2 Service Types and Services page 118 for an example Each extension must pass a list of lt dmd service gt Admd root service Scheme Variable This service represents PID 1 7 3 Installing Debugging Files Program binaries as produced by the GCC compilers for instance are typically written in the ELF format with a section containing debugging information Debugging information is what allows the debugger GDB to map binary code to source code it is required to debug a compiled program in good conditions The problem with debugging information is that is takes up a fair amount of disk space For example debugging information for the GNU C
72. arts of the package see Section 3 4 Packages with Multiple Outputs page 21 and the source location of its definition list generations pattern 1 pattern Return a list of generations along with their creation dates for each generation show the installed packages with the most recently installed packages shown last Note that the zeroth generation is never shown For each installed package print the following items separated by tabs the name of a package its version string the part of the package that is installed see Section 3 4 Packages with Multiple Outputs page 21 and the location of this package in the store When pattern is used the command returns only matching generations Valid patterns include e Integers and comma separated integers Both patterns denote generation numbers For instance list generations 1 returns the first one And list generations 1 8 2 outputs three generations in the speci fied order Neither spaces nor trailing commas are allowed e Ranges list generations 2 9 prints the specified generations and everything in between Note that the start of a range must be lesser than its end It is also possible to omit the endpoint For example list generations 2 returns all generations starting from the second one e Durations You can also get the last N days weeks or months by passing an integer along with the first letter of the duration For example list generation
73. as useradd are lost upon reconfiguration or reboot This ensures that the system remains exactly as declared user account Data Type Objects of this type represent user accounts The following members may be specified name The name of the user account group This is the name a string or identifier a number of the user group this account belongs to supplementary groups default O Optionally this can be defined as a list of group names that this account belongs to uid default f This is the user ID for this account a number or f In the latter case a number is automatically chosen by the system when the account is created Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 95 comment default A comment about the account such as the account s owner full name home directory This is the name of the home directory for the account shell default Bash This is a G expression denoting the file name of a program to be used as the shell see Section 5 6 G Expressions page 53 system default This Boolean value indicates whether the account is a system account System accounts are sometimes treated specially for instance graphical login managers do not list them password default sf You would normally leave this field to amp initialize user passwords as root with the passwd command and then let users change it with passwd Passwords set with passwd are of course preserved across reboot and reconfigurat
74. at end all the command line tools can be used even if you have not run make install To do that prefix each command with pre inst env the pre inst env script lives in the top build tree of Guix as in Chapter 8 Contributing 136 sudo pre inst env guix daemon build users group guixbuild pre inst env guix build hello Similarly for a Guile session using the Guix modules pre inst env guile c use modules guix utils pk A4current system 333 x86 64 linux and for a REPL see Section Using Guile Interactively in Guile Reference Manual pre inst env guile scheme guile user gt use guix scheme guile user gt use gnu scheme guile user gt define snakes fold packages lambda package 1st if string prefix python package name package cons package lst lst 02 scheme guile user gt length snakes 1 361 The pre inst env script sets up all the environment variables necessary to support this including PATH and GUILE LOAD PATH Note that pre inst env guix pull does not upgrade the local source tree it simply updates the config guix latest symlink see Section 3 6 Invoking guix pull page 24 Run git pull instead if you want to upgrade your local source tree 8 3 The Perfect Setup The Perfect Setup to hack on Guix is basically the perfect setup used for Guile hacking see Section Using Guile in Emacs in Guile Reference Manual First you need more than an ed
75. ation such as the available system services timezone and locale settings user accounts are declared in a single place Such a system configuration can be instantiated i e effected One of the advantages of putting all the system configuration under the control of Guix is that it supports transactional system upgrades and makes it possible to roll back to a previous system instantiation should something go wrong with the new one see Section 3 1 Features page 13 Another one is that it makes it easy to replicate the exact same configuration across different machines or at different points in time without having to resort to additional administration tools layered on top of the system s own tools This section describes this mechanism First we focus on the system administrator s viewpoint explaining how the system is configured and instantiated Then we show how this mechanism can be extended for instance to support new system services 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System The operating system is configured by providing an operating system declaration in a file that can then be passed to the guix system command see Section 7 2 13 Invoking guix system page 114 A simple setup with the default system services the default Linux Libre kernel initial RAM disk and boot loader looks like this This is an operating system configuration template for a bare bones setup with no X11 display server use modules gnu
76. ation method see Section 2 1 Binary Installation page 3 then Guix is installed somewhere in the store so the elisp files are placed in gnu store guix 0 8 2 share emacs site lisp or alike However it is not recommended to refer directly to a store directory Instead you can install Guix using Guix itself with guix package i guix command see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 and add guix profile share emacs site lisp directory to load path variable e H you did not install Guix at all and prefer a hacking way see Section 8 2 Running Guix Before It Is Installed page 135 along with augmenting load path you need to set guix load path variable to the same directory so your final configuration will look like this let dir path to your guix git tree emacs add to list load path dir setq guix load path dir require guix init nil t Chapter 4 Emacs Interface 28 By default along with autoloading see Section Autoload in The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual the main interactive commands for guix el see Section 4 2 1 Emacs Commands page 28 requiring guix init will also autoload commands for the Emacs packages installed in your user profile To disable automatic loading of installed Emacs packages set guix package enable at startup variable to nil before requiring guix init This variable has the same mean ing for Emacs packages installed with Guix as package enable at startup for th
77. avior can be restored with timeout O0 verbosity level Use the given verbosity level level must be an integer between 0 and 5 higher means more verbose output Setting a level of 4 or more may be helpful when debugging setup issues with the build daemon cores n cn Allow the use of up to n CPU cores for the build The special value 0 means to use as many CPU cores as available max jobs n Mn Allow at most n build jobs in parallel See Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 for details about this option and the equivalent guix daemon option Behind the scenes guix build is essentially an interface to the package derivation procedure of the guix packages module and to the build derivations procedure of the guix derivations module In addition to options explicitly passed on the command line guix build and other guix commands that support building honor the GUIX BUILD OPTIONS environment variable GUIX BUILD OPTIONS Environment Variable Users can define this variable to a list of command line options that will automatically be used by guix build and other guix commands that can perform builds as in the example below export GUIX BUILD OPTIONS no substitutes c 2 L foo bar These options are parsed independently and the result is appended to the parsed command line options 6 2 Invoking guix edit So many packages so many source files The guix edit command facilitates the life of packagers by poi
78. bug for debugging information see Section 7 3 Installing Debugging Files page 124 The outputs of a packages are listed in the third column of the output of guix package list available see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 3 5 Invoking guix gc Packages that are installed but not used may be garbage collected The guix gc command allows users to explicitly run the garbage collector to reclaim space from the gnu store directory It is the only way to remove files from gnu store removing files or directories manually may break it beyond repair The garbage collector has a set of known roots any file under gnu store reachable from a root is considered live and cannot be deleted any other file is considered dead and may be deleted The set of garbage collector roots includes default user profiles and may be augmented with guix build root for example see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 Prior to running guix gc collect garbage to make space it is often useful to remove old generations from user profiles that way old package builds referenced by those genera tions can be reclaimed This is achieved by running guix package delete generations see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 The guix gc command has three modes of operation it can be used to garbage collect any dead files the default to delete specific files the delete option to print garbage collector information or for more
79. cales page 96 for com patibility considerations that justify this option name service switch default default nss Configuration of libc s name service switch NSS a name service switch object See Section 7 2 10 Name Service Switch page 110 for details services default base services A list of monadic values denoting system services See Section 7 2 7 Services page 97 Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 91 pam services default base pam services Linux pluggable authentication module PAM services setuid programs default setuid programs List of string valued G expressions denoting setuid programs See Section 7 2 8 Setuid Programs page 108 sudoers file default sudoers specification The contents of the etc sudoers file as a file like object see Section 5 6 G Expressions page 53 This file specifies which users can use the sudo command what they are allowed to do and what privileges they may gain The default is that only root and members of the wheel group may use sudo 7 2 3 File Systems The list of file systems to be mounted is specified in the file systems field of the operating system s declaration see Section 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System page 85 Each file system is declared using the file system form like this file system mount point home device dev sda3 type ext4 As usual some of the fields are mandatory those shown in the example above whil
80. cece sanadan ia oiia b ERREUR END RE saad E LOCUS 20 3 4 Packages with Multiple Outputs 0 0 e eee ee eee 21 3 0 Involimpg gulx gei nep PRO ROREM RR RE e 22 3 6 Invoking guix pull ssseeee eee need 24 3 7 Invoking guix archive 24 4 Emacs Interface 27 43 Initial Setup ete ded ceed RR ere ude ea pe Pales 21 4 2 Package Management 28 4 21 Commandes 28 4 2 2 General mformation ees 29 4 2 3 Last butlers cia ce dea hene ENEE geen 30 4 2 4 Info buffer s deren Re EG CR ceci es ol 4 2 5 Configuration oues Qoeete tee RERUERRERAT E Ia eene 31 4 2 5 1 Guile and Build Opt ons 31 4 2 5 2 Buffer Names 0c cece cece eee eee eens 31 42 5 9 IKeymapS doen ia a ER SCORES EY 32 4 2 5 4 Appearance n 33 4 3 Popup Interface 33 4 4 Guix Prettify Mode 34 4 5 Build Log Mode 34 4 6 Shell Completions III 95 4 7 Development 35 5 Programming Interface 37 5 1 Defining Package 37 5 1 1 package Reference esee 39 Dil origin reet 12s EEN dd do deep ER dep bod 41 5 2 Build Systems sese mE Rer EEEE Ee 42 5 9 The Btore ceeczeee d ee D Ree alor ade EES 46 Did Derivations cio ied b ee EE EA ANERE 47 5 5 The Store Monad ccc eee ee 50 5 6 G kapresgiong eh m mee 53 UR au A IP ER 60 6 1 Invoking guix build esses 60 6 2 Invoking guix edit coe eee es Abas oe ee d 64 6 3 Invoking guix download 65 6 4 Invoking euizbasb eee
81. ch search paths only contain package inputs search paths Display the environment variable definitions that make up the environment system system s system Attempt to build for system e g i686 linux container C Run command within an isolated container The current working directory outside the container is mapped to env inside the container Additionally the spawned process runs as the current user outside the container but has root privileges in the context of the container network N For containers share the network namespace with the host system Containers created without this flag only have access to the loopback device Chapter 6 Utilities 78 expose source target For containers expose the file system source from the host system as the read only file system target within the container If target is not specified source is used as the target mount point in the container The example below spawns a Guile REPL in a container in which the user s home directory is accessible read only via the exchange directory guix environment container expose HOME exchange guile guile share source target For containers share the file system source from the host system as the writable file system target within the container If target is not specified source is used as the target mount point in the container The example below spawns a Guile REPL in a container in which the user s home directory
82. cheme Procedure Return t when path is a valid store path add text to store server name text references Scheme Procedure Add text under file name in the store and return its store path references is the list of store paths referred to by the resulting store path build derivations server derivations Scheme Procedure Build derivations a list of derivation objects or derivation paths and return when the worker is done building them Return t on success Note that the guix monads module provides a monad as well as monadic versions of the above procedures with the goal of making it more convenient to work with code that accesses the store see Section 5 5 The Store Monad page 50 This section is currently incomplete 5 4 Derivations Low level build actions and the environment in which they are performed are represented by derivations A derivation contain the following pieces of information e The outputs of the derivation derivations produce at least one file or directory in the store but may produce more e The inputs of the derivations which may be other derivations or plain files in the store patches build scripts etc e The system type targeted by the derivation e g x86 64 linux e The file name of a build script in the store along with the arguments to be passed e A list of environment variables to be defined Derivations allow clients of the daemon to communicate build actions to the store They
83. cific keys for package list buffers guix output list mode map Keymap with specific keys for output list buffers guix generation list mode map Keymap with specific keys for generation list buffers guix info mode map Parent keymap with general keys for info buffers guix package info mode map Keymap with specific keys for package info buffers guix output info mode map Keymap with specific keys for output info buffers guix generation info mode map Keymap with specific keys for generation info buffers Chapter 4 Emacs Interface 33 guix info button map Keymap with keys available when a point is placed on a button 4 2 5 4 Appearance You can change almost any aspect of list info buffers using the following variables guix list column format guix list column titles guix list column value methods Specify the columns their names what and how is displayed in list buffers guix info displayed params guix info insert methods guix info ignore empty vals guix info param title format guix info multiline prefix guix info indent guix info fill column guix info delimiter Various settings for info buffers 4 3 Popup Interface If you ever used Magit you know what popup interface is see Magit Popup User Manual Even if you are not acquainted with Magit there should be no worries as it is very intuitive So M x guix command provides a top level popup interface for all av
84. ckage as strings of the form architecture kernel for example x86 64 linux maintainers default O The list of maintainers of the package as maintainer objects location default source location of the package form The source location of the package It s useful to override this when inher iting from another package in which case this field is not automatically corrected 5 1 2 origin Reference This section summarizes all the options available in origin declarations see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 origin Data Type This is the data type representing a source code origin uri method sha256 An object containing the URI of the source The object type depends on the method see below For example when using the url fetch method of guix download the valid uri values are a URL represented as a string or a list thereof A procedure that will handle the URI Examples include url fetch from guix download download a file the HTTP HTTPS or FTP URL specified in the uri field git fetch from guix git download clone the Git version control repository and check out the revision specified in the uri field as a git reference object a git reference looks like this git reference url git git debian org git pkg shadow shadow commit v4 1 5 1 A bytevector containing the SHA 256 hash of the source Typically the base32 form is used here to generate the bytevector fro
85. commended since again it would allow build pro cesses to gain access to undeclared dependencies It is necessary though when guix daemon is running under an unprivileged user account disable log compression Disable compression of the build logs Unless lose logs is used all the build logs are kept in the localstatedir To save space the daemon automatically compresses them with bzip2 by default This option disables that disable deduplication Disable automatic file deduplication in the store By default files added to the store are automatically deduplicated if a newly added file is identical to another one found in the store the daemon makes the new file a hard link to the other file This can noticeably reduce disk usage at the expense of slightly increased input output load at the end of a build process This option disables this optimization gc keep outputs yes no Tell whether the garbage collector GC must keep outputs of live derivations When set to yes the GC will keep the outputs of any live derivation available in the store the drv files The default is no meaning that derivation outputs are kept only if they are GC roots gc keep derivations yes no Tell whether the garbage collector GC must keep derivations corresponding to live outputs When set to yes as is the case by default the GC keeps derivations i e drv files as long as at least one of their
86. ddition to those mentioned in the installation instructions see Section 2 2 Requirements page 4 e GNU Autoconf e GNU Automake e GNU Gettext e GNU Texinfo e Graphviz e GNU Help2man optional Run bootstrap to download the Nix daemon source code and to generate the build system infrastructure using autoconf It reports an error if an inappropriate version of the above packages is being used If you get an error like this one configure ac 46 error possibly undefined macro PKG_CHECK_MODULES it probably means that Autoconf couldn t find pkg m4 which is provided by pkg config Make sure that pkg m4 is available For instance if you installed Automake in usr 1ocal it wouldn t look for m4 files in usr share So you have to invoke the following command in that case export ACLOCAL_PATH usr share aclocal See see Section Macro Search Path in The GNU Automake Manual for more informa tion Then run configure as usual Finally you have to invoke make check to run tests If anything fails take a look at installation instructions see Chapter 2 Installation page 3 or send a message to the mailing list 8 2 Running Guix Before It Is Installed In order to keep a sane working environment you will find it useful to test the changes made in your local source tree checkout without actually installing them So that you can distinguish between your end user hat and your motley costume To th
87. de hooks see Section Hooks in The GNU Emacs Manual for example add hook shell mode hook guix prettify mode add hook dired mode hook guix prettify mode 4 5 Build Log Mode GNU Guix provides major and minor modes for highlighting build logs So when you have a file with a package build output for example a file returned by guix build log file command see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 you may call M x guix build log mode command in the buffer with this file This major mode highlights some lines specific to build output and provides the following key bindings Chapter 4 Emacs Interface 35 M n Move to the next build phase M p Move to the previous build phase TAB Toggle show hide the body of the current build phase S TAB Toggle show hide the bodies of all build phases There is also M x guix build log minor mode which also provides the same highlight ing and the same key bindings as the major mode but prefixed with C c By default this minor mode is enabled in shell buffers see Section Interactive Shell in The GNU Emacs Manual If you don t like it set guix build log minor mode activate to nil 4 6 Shell Completions Another feature that becomes available after configuring Emacs interface see Section 4 1 Emacs Initial Setup page 27 is completing of guix subcommands options packages and other things in shell see Section Interactive Shell in The GNU Emacs Manual and eshell
88. dependencies guix graph coreutils dot Tpdf gt dag pdf Chapter 6 Utilities T3 The output looks like this coreutils 8 24 l iibcap 224 ac 22 52 V attr 2 4 46 J gettext 0 19 6 gmp 6 0 0a m4 1 4 17 perl 5 16 1 expat 2 1 0 Nice little graph no But there s more than one graph The one above is concise it s the graph of package objects omitting implicit inputs such as GCC libc grep etc It s often useful to have such a concise graph but sometimes you want to see more details guix graph supports several types of graphs allowing you to choose the level of details package This is the default type the one we used above It shows the DAG of package objects excluding implicit dependencies It is concise but filters out many details bag emerged This is the package DAG including implicit inputs For instance the following command guix graph type bag emerged coreutils dot Tpdf gt dag pdf 74 Compared to yy Af LZ Sx Gees E E e L EE f A AT GL LL P 7 pi fN S SN E at ESS SRY SS SSS SSS ae SSS SSS SS awn S SSS S NN SSE N SS GE N 3 we see all the implicit inputs of gnu build system page 42 Build Systems but this time including all the boots
89. der one of the guixbuilder users On GNU Linux by default the chroot environment contains nothing but e a minimal dev directory created mostly independently from the host dev e the proc directory it only shows the container s processes since a separate PID name space is used e etc passwd with an entry for the current user and an entry for user nobody e etc group with an entry for the user s group e etc hosts with an entry that maps localhost to 127 0 0 1 a writable tmp directory If you are installing Guix as an unprivileged user it is still possible to run guix daemon provided you pass disable chroot However build processes will not be isolated from one another and not from the rest of the system Thus build processes may interfere with each other and may access programs libraries and other files available on the system making it much harder to view them as pure functions 2 4 2 Using the Offload Facility When desired the build daemon can offload derivation builds to other machines running Guix using the offload build hook When that feature is enabled a list of user specified build machines is read from etc guix machines scm anytime a build is requested for instance via guix build the daemon attempts to offload it to one of the machines that satisfies the derivation s constraints in particular its system type e g x86 64 linux Missing prerequisites for the build are copied over SSH to the target m
90. dic Procedure target 20 graft zt hash 4 hash algo 4 recursive f env vars OH modules OH module path Zload path references graphs 1 allowed references 1 leaked env vars f script name string append name builder local build 4 substitutable t guile for build zi Return a derivation name that runs exp a gexp with guile for build a derivation on system exp is stored in a file called script name When target is true it is used as the cross compilation target triplet for packages referred to by exp Make modules available in the evaluation context of exp modules is a list of names of Guile modules searched in module path to be copied in the store compiled and made available in the load path during the execution of exp e g guix build utils guix build gnu build system graft determines whether packages referred to by exp should be grafted when appli cable When references graphs is true it must be a list of tuples of one of the following forms file name package file name package output file name derivation file name derivation output file name store item The right hand side of each element of references graphs is automatically made an input of the build process of exp In the build environment each file name contains the reference graph of the corresponding item in a simple text format allowed references must be either amp f or a list
91. ding tele sde nirp te bee eme ge wera NENNEN 137 8 4 1 Programming Paradigm 00 c cece eee eens 137 SAD Modules aen SERA peu d Espere 137 8 4 8 Data Types and Pattern Matching 00 137 8 4 4 Formatting Code 137 8 5 Submitting Patches 0 0 cece eee ee 137 9 Acknowledements nannaa nanna 139 Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License UNI uU ead aque d UP P 140 Programming Index GNU Guix 1 GNU Guix This document describes GNU Guix version 0 9 0 a functional package management tool written for the GNU system Chapter 1 Introduction 2 1 Introduction GNU Guix is a functional package management tool for the GNU system Package man agement consists of all activities that relate to building packages from sources honoring their build time and run time dependencies installing packages in user environments up grading 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 pioneered by Nix see Chapter 9 Acknowledgments page 139 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 and returns an installed package As a pure function its result depends solely on its inputs for instance it cannot refer to software or scripts that were
92. e others can be omitted These are described below file system Data Type Objects of this type represent file systems to be mounted They contain the following members type This is a string specifying the type of the file system e g ext4 mount point This designates the place where the file system is to be mounted device This names the source of the file system By default it is the name of a node under dev but its meaning depends on the title field described below title default device This is a symbol that specifies how the device field is to be interpreted When it is the symbol device then the device field is interpreted as a file name when it is label then device is interpreted as a partition label name when it is uuid device is interpreted as a partition unique identifier UUID UUIDs may be converted from their string representation as shown by the tune2fs 1 command using the uuid form like this file system mount point home type ext4 Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 92 title uuid device uuid 4dab5feb di76 45de b287 9b0a6e4c01cb The Label and uuid options offer a way to refer to disk partitions without having to hard code their actual device name However when a file system s source is a mapped device see Section 7 2 4 Mapped Devices page 93 its device field must refer to the mapped device name e g dev mapper root partition and consequently title must be s
93. e Documentation License 143 N O be listed in the History section of the Document You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission List on the Title Page as authors one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document all of its principal authors if it has fewer than five unless they release you from this requirement State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version as the publisher Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices Include immediately after the copyright notices a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License in the form shown in the Addendum below Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document s license notice Include an unaltered copy of this License Preserve the section Entitled History Preserve its Title and add to it an item stating at least the title year new authors and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page If there is no section Entitled History in the Docu ment create one stating the title year authors and publisher of the
94. e built in Emacs package system see Section Package Installation in The GNU Emacs Manual You can activate Emacs packages installed in your profile whenever you want using M x guix emacs load autoloads 4 2 Package Management Once guix el has been successfully configured you should be able to use a visual interface for routine package management tasks pretty much like the guix package command see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 Specifically it makes it easy to e browse and display packages and generations e search install upgrade and remove packages e display packages from previous generations e do some other useful things 4 2 1 Commands All commands for displaying packages and generations use the current profile which can be changed with M x guix set current profile Alternatively if you call any of these commands with prefix argument C u you will be prompted for a profile just for that command Commands for displaying packages M x guix all available packages M x guix newest available packages Display all newest available packages M x guix installed packages Display all installed packages M x guix obsolete packages Display obsolete packages the packages that are installed in a profile but cannot be found among available packages M x guix search by name Display package s with the specified name M x guix search by regexp Search for packages by a specified regexp By defaul
95. e counterpart of the interned file monadic procedure see Section 5 5 The Store Monad page 50 plain file name content Scheme Procedure Return an object representing a text file called name with the given content a string to be added to the store This is the declarative counterpart of text file computed file name gexp modules Y options Scheme Procedure local build t Return an object representing the store item name a file or directory computed by gexp modules specifies the set of modules visible in the execution context of gexp options is a list of additional arguments to pass to gexp gt derivation This is the declarative counterpart of gexp gt derivation gexp gt script name exp Monadic Procedure Return an executable script name that runs exp using guile with modules in its search path The example below builds a script that simply invokes the 1s command use modules guix gexp gnu packages base gexp gt script list files 4 execl string append coreutils bin ls ls When running it through the store see Section 5 5 The Store Monad page 50 we obtain a derivation that produces an executable file gnu store list files along these lines Chapter 5 Programming Interface 58 gnu store guile 2 0 11 bin guile ds Hit execl string append gnu store coreutils 8 22 bin ls ls program file name exp modules guile 1 Scheme Procedure
96. e final 6 10 Invoking guix environment The purpose of guix environment is to assist hackers in creating reproducible development environments without polluting their package profile The guix environment tool takes one or more packages builds all of the necessary inputs and creates a shell environment to use them The general syntax is guix environment options package The following example spawns a new shell set up for the development of GNU Guile guix environment guile If the specified packages are not built yet guix environment automatically builds them The new shell s environment is an augmented version of the environment that guix environment was run in It contains the necessary search paths for building the given package added to the existing environment variables To create a pure environment in which the original environment variables have been unset use the pure option guix environment defines the GUIX ENVIRONMENT variable in the shell it spaws This allows users to say define a specific prompt for development environments in their bashrc see Section Bash Startup Files in The GNU Bash Reference Manual if n GUIX ENVIRONMENT then export PS1 u h Nw dev N fi Users sometimes wrongfully augment environment variables such as PATH in their bashrc file As a consequence when guix environment launches it Bash may read bashrc thereby introducing impurities in these environment var
97. e guix build command builds packages or derivations and their dependencies and prints the resulting store paths Note that it does not modify the user s profile this is the job of the guix package command see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 Thus it is mainly useful for distribution developers The general syntax is guix build options package or derivation package or derivation may be either the name of a package found in the software distri bution such as coreutils or coreutils 8 20 or a derivation such as gnu store coreutils 8 19 drv In the former case a package with the corresponding name and optionally version is searched for among the GNU distribution modules see Section 7 5 Package Modules page 126 Alternatively the expression option may be used to specify a Scheme expression that evaluates to a package this is useful when disambiguation among several same named packages or package variants is needed The options may be zero or more of the following file file f file Build the package or derivation that the code within file evaluates to As an example file might contain a package definition like this see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 use modules guix guix build system gnu guix licenses package name hello version 2 10 source origin method url fetch uri string append mirror gnu hello hello version tar gz sha256 base32 Ossii
98. e rules We require all top level procedures to carry a docstring This requirement can be relaxed for simple private procedures in the guix build name space though Procedures should not have more than four positional parameters Use keyword param eters for procedures that take more than four parameters 8 5 Submitting Patches Development is done using the Git distributed version control system Thus access to the repository is not strictly necessary We welcome contributions in the form of patches as produced by git format patch sent to the mailing list Please write commit logs in the ChangeLog format see Section Change Logs in GNU Coding Standards you can check the commit history for examples Chapter 8 Contributing 138 Before submitting a patch that adds or modifies a package definition please run through this check list 1 Take some time to provide an adequate synopsis and description for the package See Section 7 6 4 Synopses and Descriptions page 129 for some guidelines Run guix lint package where package is the name of the new or modified package and fix any errors it reports see Section 6 7 Invoking guix lint page 70 Make sure the package builds on your platform using guix build package Take a look at the profile reported by guix size see Section 6 8 Invoking guix size page 71 This will allow you to notice references to other packages unwillingly retained It may also help determi
99. e under the terms of the GNU LGPL version 3 guix package s recsel p name e license LGPL 3 name elfutils name gmp show package Show details about package taken from the list of available packages in recutils format see GNU recutils manual guix package show python recsel p name version name python version 2 7 6 name python version 3 3 5 You may also specify the full name of a package to only get details about a specific version of it Chapter 3 Package Management 19 guix package show python 3 3 5 recsel p name version name python version 3 3 5 list installed regexp I regexp List the currently installed packages in the specified profile with the most re cently installed packages shown last When regexp is specified list only installed packages whose name matches regexp For each installed package print the following items separated by tabs the package name its version string the part of the package that is installed for instance out for the default output include for its headers etc and the path of this package in the store list available regexp A regexp List packages currently available in the distribution for this system see Chapter 7 GNU Distribution page 82 When regexp is specified list only installed packages whose name matches regexp For each package print the following items separated by tabs its name its version string the p
100. ecessary to run the operating system specified in file This is useful for first time installations of GuixSD For instance guix system init my os config scm mnt copies to mnt all the store items required by the configuration specified in my os config scm This includes configuration files packages and so on It also creates other essential files needed for the system to operate correctly e g the etc var and run directories and the bin sh file This command also installs GRUB on the device specified in my os config unless the no grub option was passed vm Build a virtual machine that contain the operating system declared in file and return a script to run that virtual machine VM Arguments given to the script are passed as is to QEMU The VM shares its store with the host system Additional file systems can be shared between the host and the VM using the share and expose command line options the former specifies a directory 8 This action is usable only on systems already running GuixSD Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 115 vm image disk image container to be shared with write access while the latter provides read only access to the shared directory The example below creates a VM in which the user s home directory is accessible read only and where the exchange directory is a read write mapping of the host s HOME tmp guix system vm my config scm expose HOME share HOME tmp exchange O
101. ecially crucial on a multi user system To do that the administrator can specify several libc packages in the locale libcs field of operating system use package modules base operating system locale libcs list glibc 2 21 canonical package glibc This example would lead to a system containing locale definitions for both libc 2 21 and the current version of libc in run current system locale 7 2 7 Services An important part of preparing an operating system declaration is listing system ser vices and their configuration see Section 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System page 85 System services are typically daemons launched when the system boots or other actions needed at that time e g configuring network access D Versions 2 23 and later of GNU libc will simply skip the incompatible locale data which is already an improvement Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 98 Services are managed by GNU dmd see Section Introduction in GNU dmd Manual On a running system the deco command allows you to list the available services show their status start and stop them or do other specific operations see Section Jump Start in GNU dmd Manual For example deco status dmd The above command run as root lists the currently defined services The deco doc command shows a synopsis of the given service deco doc nscd Run libc s name service cache daemon nscd The start stop and restart sub commands have the eff
102. ect you would expect For instance the commands below stop the nscd service and restart the Xorg display server deco stop nscd Service nscd has been stopped deco restart xorg server Service xorg server has been stopped Service xorg server has been started The following sections document the available services starting with the core services that may be used in an operating system declaration 7 2 7 1 Base Services The gnu services base module provides definitions for the basic services that one ex pects from the system The services exported by this module are listed below Abase services Scheme Variable This variable contains a list of basic services one would expect from the system a login service mingetty on each tty syslogd libc s name service cache daemon nscd the udev device manager and more This is the default value of the services field of operating system declarations Usually when customizing a system you will want to append services to base services like this cons avahi service lsh service base services host name service name Scheme Procedure Return a service that sets the host name to name mingetty service config Scheme Procedure Return a service to run mingetty according to config a lt mingetty configuration gt object which specifies the tty to run among other things mingetty configuration Data Type This is the data type representing the configuration of Ming
103. ection 7 2 14 2 Service Types and Services page 118 for examples service extension target type compute Scheme Procedure Return a new extension for services of type target type compute must be a one argument procedure fold services calls it passing it the value associated with the service that provides the extension it must return a valid value for the target service service extension obj Scheme Procedure Return true if obj is a service extension At the core of the service abstraction lies the fold services procedure which is re sponsible for compiling a list of services down to a single directory that contains every thing needed to boot and run the system the directory shown by the guix system build command see Section 7 2 13 Invoking guix system page 114 In essence it propagates service extensions down the service graph updating each node parameters on the way until it reaches the root node fold services services target type Scheme Procedure system service type Fold services by propagating their extensions down to the root of type target type return the root service adjusted accordingly Lastly the gnu services module also defines several essential service types some of which are listed below system service type Scheme Variable This is the root of the service graph It produces the system directory as returned by the guix system build command boot service type Scheme Variable The type
104. ed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software because free software needs free documentation a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does But this License is not limited to software manuals it can be used for any textual work regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS This License applies to any manual or other work in any medium that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License Such a notice grants a world wide royalty free license unlimited in duration to use that work under the conditions stated herein The Document below refers to any such manual or work Any member of the public is a licensee and is addressed as you You accept the license if you copy modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright law A Modified Version of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it either copied verbatim or with modifications and or translated into another language A Secondary Section is a named appendix or a front matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document s overall subject or to related mat
105. ed to as store paths The store has an associated database that contains information such as the store paths referred to by each store path and the list of valid store paths paths that result from a successful build The store is always accessed by the daemon on behalf of its clients see Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 To manipulate the store clients connect to the daemon over a Unix domain socket send it requests and read the result these are remote procedure calls or RPCs The Cguix store module provides procedures to connect to the daemon and to perform RPCs These are described below Chapter 5 Programming Interface 4T open connection file reserve space Zt Scheme Procedure Connect to the daemon over the Unix domain socket at file When reserve space is true instruct it to reserve a little bit of extra space on the file system so that the garbage collector can still operate should the disk become full Return a server object file defaults to default socket path which is the normal location given the options that were passed to configure close connection server Scheme Procedure Close the connection to server current build output port Scheme Variable This variable is bound to a SRFI 39 parameter which refers to the port where build and error logs sent by the daemon should be written Procedures that make RPCs all take a server object as their first argument valid path server path S
106. ed to user space This requires the binfmt ko kernel module to be loaded Afuse control file system Scheme Variable The fusectl file system which allows unprivileged users to mount and unmount user space FUSE file systems This requires the fuse ko kernel module to be loaded 7 2 4 Mapped Devices The Linux kernel has a notion of device mapping a block device such as a hard disk partition can be mapped into another device with additional processing over the data that flows through it A typical example is encryption device mapping all writes to the mapped device are encrypted and all reads are deciphered transparently Mapped devices are declared using the mapped device form mapped device source dev sda3 target home type luks device mapping This example specifies a mapping from dev sda3 to dev mapper home using LUKS the Linux Unified Key Setup a standard mechanism for disk encryption The dev mapper home device can then be used as the device of a file system declaration see Section 7 2 3 File Systems page 91 The mapped device form is detailed below 5 Note that the GNU Hurd makes no difference between the concept of a mapped device and that of a file system both boil down to translating input output operations made on a file to operations on its backing store Thus the Hurd implements mapped devices like file systems using the generic translator mechanism see Section Translators in The GNU
107. ee Section Bash Startup Files in The GNU Bash Reference Manual so that newly spawned shells get all the right environment variable definitions GUIX PROFILE HOME guix profile source HOME guix profile etc profile In a multi user setup user profiles are stored in a place registered as a garbage collector root which HOME guix profile points to see Section 3 5 Invoking guix gc page 22 That directory is normally localstatedir profiles per user user where localstatedir is the value passed to configure as localstatedir and user is the user name The per user directory is created when guix daemon is started and the user sub directory is created by guix package The options can be among the following Chapter 3 Package Management 15 install package i package Install the specified packages Each package may specify either a simple package name such as guile or a package name followed by a hyphen and version number such as guile 1 8 8 or simply guile 1 8 in the latter case the newest version prefixed by 1 8 is selected If no version number is specified the newest available version will be selected In addition package may contain a colon followed by the name of one of the outputs of the package as in gcc doc or binutils 2 22 1ib see Section 3 4 Packages with Multiple Outputs page 21 Packages with a corresponding name and optionally version are searched for among the GNU distribution modu
108. ee Section 5 3 The Store page 46 and var guix The latter contains a ready to use profile for root see next step Do not unpack the tarball on a working Guix system since that would overwrite its own essential files The warning no timestamp option makes sure GNU tar does not emit warnings about implausibly old time stamps such warnings were triggered by GNU tar 1 26 and older recent versions are fine They stem from the fact that all the files in the archive have their modification time set to zero which means January 1st 1970 This is done on purpose to make sure the archive content is independent of its creation time thus making it reproducible 3 Make root s profile available under guix profile 1n sf var guix profiles per user root guix profile root guix profile 4 Create the group and user accounts for build users as explained below see Section 2 4 1 Build Environment Setup page 5 5 Run the daemon root guix profile bin guix daemon build users group guixbuild On hosts using the systemd init system drop root guix profile lib systemd system guix daemon service in etc systemd system 1 As usual make sure to download the associated sig file and to verify the authenticity of the tarball against it Chapter 2 Installation 4 6 Make the guix command available to other users on the machine for instance with mkdir p usr local bin cd usr local bin 1n s var guix profiles per
109. eir own build farm such that hydra gnu org is less of an interesting target One way to help is by publishing the software you build using guix publish so that others have one more choice of server to download substitutes from see Section 6 11 Invoking guix publish page 78 Guix has the foundations to maximize build reproducibility see Section 3 1 Features page 13 In most cases independent builds of a given package or derivation should yield bit identical results Thus through a diverse set of independent package builds we can strengthen the integrity of our systems The guix challenge command aims to help users assess substitute servers and to assist developers in finding out about non deterministic package builds see Section 6 12 Invoking guix challenge page 79 In the future we want Guix to have support to publish and retrieve binaries to from other users in a peer to peer fashion If you would like to discuss this project join us on guix develOgnu org 3 4 Packages with Multiple Outputs Often packages defined in Guix have a single output i e the source package leads exactly one directory in the store When running guix package i glibc one installs the default output of the GNU libc package the default output is called out but its name can be omitted as shown in this command In this particular case the default output of glibc contains all the C header files shared libraries static libraries Info documentation
110. ely available drawing editor and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup or absence of markup has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent An image format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text A copy that is not Transparent is called Opaque Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup Texinfo input format La TEX input format SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD and standard conforming simple HTML PostScript or PDF designed for human modification Examples of transparent image formats include PNG XCF and JPG Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors SGML or XML for which the DTD and or pro cessing tools are not generally available and the machine generated HTML PostScript or PDF produced by some word processors for output purposes only The Title Page means for a printed book the title page itself plus such following pages as are needed to hold legibly the material this License requires to appear in the title page For works in formats which do not have any title page as such Title Page means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work s title preceding
111. em total self gnu store coreutils 8 23 70 0 13 9 19 8 gnu store gmp 6 0 0a 55 3 2 5 3 6 gnu store acl 2 2 52 53 7 0 5 0 7 gnu store attr 2 4 46 53 2 0 3 0 5 gnu store gcc 4 8 4 lib 52 9 15 7 22 4 gnu store glibc 2 21 37 2 37 2 53 1 The store items listed here constitute the transitive closure of Coreutils i e Coreutils and all its dependencies recursively as would be returned by guix gc R gnu store coreutils 8 23 Here the output shows 3 columns next to store items The first column labeled total shows the size in mebibytes MiB of the closure of the store item that is its own size plus the size of all its dependencies The next column labeled self shows the size of the item itself The last column shows the ratio of the item s size to the space occupied by all the items listed here In this example we see that the closure of Coreutils weighs in at 70 MiB half of which is taken by libc That libc represents a large fraction of the closure is not a problem per se because it is always available on the system anyway When the package passed to guix size is available in the store guix size queries the daemon to determine its dependencies and measures its size in the store similar to du ms apparent size see Section du invocation in GNU Coreutils Chapter 6 Utilities 72 When the given package is not in the store guix size reports information based on information
112. emon nscd configuration name services default List of packages denoting name services that must be visible to the nscd e g list nss mdns glibc default glibc Package object denoting the GNU C Library providing the nscd com mand log file default var log nscd log Name of nscd s log file This is where debugging output goes when debug level is strictly positive debug level default 0 Integer denoting the debugging levels Higher numbers mean more de bugging output is logged caches default nscd default caches List of lt nscd cache gt objects denoting things to be cached see below nscd cache Data Type Data type representing a cache database of nscd and its parameters database This is a symbol representing the name of the database to be cached Valid values are passwd group hosts and services which designate Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 100 the corresponding NSS database see Section NSS Basics in The GNU C Library Reference Manual positive time to live negative time to live default 20 A number representing the number of seconds during which a positive or negative lookup result remains in cache check files default itt Whether to check for updates of the files corresponding to database For instance when database is hosts setting this flag instructs nscd to check for updates in etc hosts and to take them into account persistent default t Whether the cache
113. ent rules and makes them available to the eudev daemon the etc service populates the system s etc directory GuixSD services are connected by extensions For instance the secure shell service ez tends dmd GuixSD s initialization system running as PID 1 by giving it the command lines to start and stop the secure shell daemon see Section 7 2 7 2 Networking Services page 101 the UPower service extends the D Bus service by passing it its service specifica tion and extends the udev service by passing it device management rules see Section 7 2 7 4 Desktop Services page 104 the Guix daemon service extends dmd by passing it the com mand lines to start and stop the daemon and extends the account service by passing it a list of required build user accounts see Section 7 2 7 1 Base Services page 98 Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 118 All in all services and their extends relations form a directed acyclic graph DAG If we represent services as boxes and extensions as arrows a typical system might provide something like this JOE Yn C oe Xf accounss accounts am y activation At the bottom we see the system service which produces the directory containing everything to run and boot the system as returned by the guix system build command See Section 7 2 14 3 Service Reference page 120 to learn about the other service types shown here See system extension graph page 116 for inf
114. equired under some circum stances guix refresh list dependent flex Building the following 120 packages would ensure 213 dependent packages are rebuilt hop 2 4 0 geiser 0 4 notmuch 0 18 mu 0 9 9 5 cflow 1 4 idutils 4 6 The command above lists a set of packages that could be built to check for compatibility with an upgraded flex package The following options can be used to customize GnuPG operation gpg command Use command as the GnuPG 2 x command command is searched for in PATH key download policy Handle missing OpenPGP keys according to policy which may be one of always Always download missing OpenPGP keys from the key server and add them to the user s GnuPG keyring never Never try to download missing OpenPGP keys Instead just bail out interactive When a package signed with an unknown OpenPGP key is encoun tered ask the user whether to download it or not This is the default behavior key server host Use host as the OpenPGP key server when importing a public key 6 7 Invoking guix lint The guix lint is meant to help package developers avoid common errors and use a consis tent style It runs a number of checks on a given set of packages in order to find common mistakes in their definitions Available checkers include see list checkers for a com plete list synopsis description Validate certain typographical and stylistic rules about package descriptions and synopses inputs should be na
115. er to these binaries on the target platform That is the hashes and URLs of the bootstrap tarballs for the new platform must be added alongside those of the currently supported platforms The bootstrap Guile tarball is treated specially it is expected to be available locally and gnu system am has rules do download it for the supported architectures a rule for the new platform must be added as well In practice there may be some complications First it may be that the extended GNU triplet that specifies an ABI like the eabi suffix above is not recognized by all the GNU tools Typically glibc recognizes some of these whereas GCC uses an extra with abi configure flag see gcc scm for examples of how to handle this Second some of the required packages could fail to build for that platform Lastly the generated binaries could be broken for some reason Chapter 8 Contributing 135 8 Contributing This project is a cooperative effort and we need your help to make it grow Please get in touch with us on guix devel gnu org and guix on the Freenode IRC network We welcome ideas bug reports patches and anything that may be helpful to the project We particularly welcome help on packaging see Section 7 6 Packaging Guidelines page 127 8 1 Building from Git If you want to hack Guix itself it is recommended to use the latest version from the Git repository When building Guix from a checkout the following packages are required in a
116. ersion of a package its build system and its dependencies These definitions can then be turned into concrete build actions Build actions are performed by the Guix daemon on behalf of users In a standard setup the daemon has write access to the store the gnu store directory whereas users do not The recommended setup also has the daemon perform builds in chroots under a specific build users to minimize interference with the rest of the system Lower level APIs are available to interact with the daemon and the store To instruct the daemon to perform a build action users actually provide it with a derivation A derivation is a low level representation of the build actions to be taken and the environment in which they should occur derivations are to package definitions what assembly is to C programs The term derivation comes from the fact that build results derive from them This chapter describes all these APIs in turn starting from high level package definitions 5 1 Defining Packages The high level interface to package definitions is implemented in the guix packages and guix build system modules As an example the package definition or recipe for the GNU Hello package looks like this define module gnu packages hello use module guix packages use module guix download use module guix build system gnu use module guix licenses use module gnu packages gawk define public hello package
117. et to device This is required so that the system knows that mounting the file system depends on having the corresponding device mapping established flags default O This is a list of symbols denoting mount flags Recognized flags include read only bind mount no dev disallow access to special files no suid ignore setuid and setgid bits and no exec disallow program ex ecution options default This is either f or a string denoting mount options needed for boot default This Boolean value indicates whether the file system is needed when boot ing If that is true then the file system is mounted when the initial RAM disk initrd is loaded This is always the case for instance for the root file system check default stt This Boolean indicates whether the file system needs to be checked for errors before being mounted create mount point default f When true the mount point is created if it does not exist yet dependencies default This is a list of lt file system gt objects representing file systems that must be mounted before and unmounted after this one As an example consider a hierarchy of mounts sys fs cgroup is a dependency of sys fs cgroup cpu and sys fs cgroup memory The gnu system file systems exports the following useful variables Abase file systems Scheme Variable These are essential file systems that are required on normal systems such as pse
118. etty which implements console log in tty The name of the console this Mingetty runs on e g tty1 motd A file like object containing the message of the day 7 Technically this is a list of monadic services See Section 5 5 The Store Monad page 50 Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 99 auto login default f When true this field must be a string denoting the user name under which the the system automatically logs in When it is f a user name and password must be entered to log in login program default f This must be either f in which case the default log in program is used login from the Shadow tool suite or a gexp denoting the name of the log in program login pause default 4f When set to stt in conjunction with auto login the user will have to press a key before the log in shell is launched mingetty default mingetty The Mingetty package to use nscd service config glibc glibc name services Scheme Procedure Return a service that runs libc s name service cache daemon nscd with the given config an lt nscd configuration gt object See Section 7 2 10 Name Service Switch page 110 for an example Anscd default configuration Scheme Variable This is the default nscd configuration value see below used by nscd service This uses the caches defined by nscd default caches see below nscd configuration Data Type This is the type representing the name service cache da
119. f its output file name had been introduced e Gexps carry information about the packages or derivations they refer to and these dependencies are automatically added as inputs to the build processes that use them This mechanism is not limited to package and derivation objects compilers able to lower other high level objects to derivations or files in the store can be defined such that these objects can also be inserted into gexps For example a useful type of high level object that can be inserted in a gexp is file like objects which make it easy to add files to the store and refer to them in derivations and such see local file and plain file below To illustrate the idea here is an example of a gexp define build exp 4 begin mkdir output chdir output symlink string append coreutils bin ls list files This gexp can be passed to gexp gt derivation we obtain a derivation that builds a directory containing exactly one symlink to gnu store coreutils 8 22 bin ls gexp gt derivation the thing build exp As one would expect the gnu store coreutils 8 22 string is substituted to the reference to the coreutils package in the actual build code and coreutils is automatically made an input to the derivation Likewise output equivalent to ungexp output is replaced by a string containing the derivation s output directory name In a cross compilation context it is useful to distinguish
120. ffer without updating information M Apply manifest to the current profile or to a specified profile if prefix argument is used This has the same meaning as manifest option see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 C c C z Goto the Guix REPL see Section The REPL in Geiser User Manual Describe current mode to see all available bindings Hint If you need several list or info buffers you can simlpy M x clone buffer them and each buffer will have its own history Warning Name version pairs cannot be used to identify packages because a name is not necessarily unique so guix el uses special identifiers that live only during a guile session so if the Guix REPL was restarted you may want to revert list buffer by pressing g Chapter 4 Emacs Interface 30 4 2 3 List buffer An interface of a list buffer is similar to the interface provided by package el see Section Package Menu in The GNU Emacs Manual Default key bindings available for both package list and generation list buffers DEL Mark the current entry with prefix mark all entries Unmark the current entry with prefix unmark all entries Unmark backward Sort entries by a specified column A package list buffer additionally provides the following bindings RET m G Q Describe marked packages display available information in a package info buffer
121. fig config Scheme Procedure Return a service that runs the elogind login and seat management daemon Elogind exposes a D Bus interface that can be used to know which users are logged in know what kind of sessions they have open suspend the system inhibit system suspend reboot the system and other tasks Elogind handles most system level power events for a computer for example suspend ing the system when a lid is closed or shutting it down when the power button is pressed The config keyword argument specifies the configuration for elogind and should be the result of a elogind configuration parameter value invocation Available parameters and their default values are kill user processes f kill only users OQ kill exclude users root inhibit delay max seconds 5 handle power key poweroff Chapter 7 GNU Distribution handle suspend key suspend handle hibernate key hibernate handle lid switch suspend handle lid switch docked ignore power key ignore inhibited f suspend key ignore inhibited f hibernate key ignore inhibited f lid switch ignore inhibited t holdoff timeout seconds 30 idle action ignore idle action seconds 30 60 runtime directory size percent 10 runtime directory size f remove ipc t suspend state mem standby freeze suspend mode OQ hibernate state disk hibernate mode platform shutdown hybrid sleep state disk hybr
122. fter the cessation Moreover your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License for any work from that copyright holder and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties who have received copies or rights from you under this License If your rights have been terminated and not permanently reinstated receipt of a copy of some or all of the same material does not give you any rights to use it Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License 146 10 11 FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE The Free Software Foundation may publish new revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns See http www gnu org copyleft Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License or any later version applies to it you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published not as a draft by the Free Software Foundation If the Documen
123. g on which of Build PL or Makefile PL is present in the package distribu tion Preference is given to the former if both Build PL and Makefile PL exist in the package distribution This preference can be reversed by specifying t for the make maker parameter The initial perl Makefile PL or perl Build PL invocation passes flags specified by the make maker flags or module build flags parameter respectively Which Perl package is used can be specified with amp per1 r build system Scheme Variable This variable is exported by guix build system r It implements the build proce dure used by R packages which essentially is little more than running R CMD INSTALL library gnu store in an environment where R_LIBS_SITE contains the paths to all R package inputs Tests are run after installation using the R function tools testInstalledPackage ruby build system Scheme Variable This variable is exported by guix build system ruby It implements the RubyGems build procedure used by Ruby packages which involves running gem build followed by gem install The source field of a package that uses this build system typically references a gem archive since this is the format that Ruby developers use when releasing their soft ware The build system unpacks the gem archive potentially patches the source runs the test suite repackages the gem and installs it Additionally directories and tarballs may be referenced to allow building
124. gned to provide a simple visual front end for the X11 resize and rotate RandR extension 7 6 5 Python Modules We currently package Python 2 and Python 3 under the Scheme variable names python 2 and python as explained in Section 7 6 3 Version Numbers page 128 To avoid confusion and naming clashes with other programming languages it seems desirable that the name of a package for a Python module contains the word python Some modules are compatible with only one version of Python others with both If the package Foo compiles only with Python 3 we name it python foo if it compiles only with Python 2 we name it python2 foo If it is compatible with both versions we create two packages with the corresponding names If a project already contains the word python we drop this for instance the module python dateutil is packaged under the names python dateutil and python2 dateutil 1 6 6 Perl Modules Perl programs standing for themselves are named as any other package using the lowercase upstream name For Perl packages containing a single class we use the lowercase class name replace all occurrences of by dashes and prepend the prefix perl So the class XML Parser becomes perl xml parser Modules containing several classes keep their lowercase upstream name and are also prepended by perl Such modules tend to have the word perl somewhere in their name which gets dropped in favor of the prefix For instance libwww perl beco
125. gnu build system Scheme Variable gnu build system represents the GNU Build System and variants thereof see Section Configuration in GNU Coding Standards In a nutshell packages using it configured built and installed with the usual configure amp amp make amp amp make check amp amp make install command sequence In practice a few additional steps are often needed All these steps are split up in separate phases notably unpack Unpack the source tarball and change the current directory to the ex tracted source tree If the source is actually a directory copy it to the build tree and enter that directory patch source shebangs Patch shebangs encountered in source files so they refer to the right store file names For instance this changes bin sh to t gnu store bash 4 3 bin sh configure Run the configure script with a number of default options such as prefix gnu store as well as the options specified by the configure flags argument build Run make with the list of flags specified with make flags If the parallel builds argument is true the default build with make j check Run make check or some other target specified with test target unless tests f is passed If the parallel tests argument is true the default run make check j install Run make install with the flags listed in make flags patch shebangs Patch shebangs on the installed executable files
126. h gexp gt derivation sh 4 symlink string append drv bin bash output There several things to note in the second version the store parameter is now im plicit and is threaded in the calls to the package gt derivation and gexp gt derivation monadic procedures and the monadic value returned by package gt derivation is bound using mlet instead of plain let As it turns out the call to package gt derivation can even be omitted since it will take place implicitly as we will see later see Section 5 6 G Expressions page 53 define sh symlink gexp gt derivation sh symlink string append bash bin bash output Calling the monadic sh symlink has no effect As someone once said you exit a monad like you exit a building on fire by running So to exit the monad and get the desired effect one must use run with store run with store open connection sh symlink Chapter 5 Programming Interface 51 gnu store sh symlink Note that the guix monad repl module extends Guile s REPL with new meta commands to make it easier to deal with monadic procedures run in store and enter store monad The former is used to run a single monadic value through the store scheme guile user gt run in store package gt derivation hello 1 lt derivation gnu store hello 2 9 drv gt gt The latter enters a recursive REPL where all the return values are automatic
127. hat builds upon base services and adds or adjust services for a typical desktop setup In particular it adds a graphical login manager see Section 7 2 7 3 X Window page 103 screen lockers a network management tool see Section 7 2 7 2 Networking Services page 101 energy and color management services the elogind login and seat manager the Polkit privilege service the GeoClue location service an NTP client see Section 7 2 7 2 Networking Services page 101 the Avahi daemon and has the name service switch service configured to be able to use nss mdns see Section 7 2 10 Name Service Switch page 110 The desktop services variable can be used as the services field of an operating system declaration see Section 7 2 2 operating system Reference page 89 The actual service definitions provided by gnu services dbus and gnu services desktop are described below dbus service dbus dbus services OU Scheme Procedure Return a service that runs the system bus using dbus with support for services D Bus is an inter process communication facility Its system bus is used to allow system services to communicate and be notified of system wide events services must be a list of packages that provide an etc dbus 1 system d directory containing additional D Bus configuration and policy files For example to allow avahi daemon to use the system bus services must be equal to list avahi elogind service con
128. here wrapping would gratuitously add a dependency of that output on GLib and GTK glib or gtk compile schemas The phase glib or gtk compile schemas makes sure that all GLib s GSettings schemas are compiled Compilation is performed by the glib compile schemas program It is provided by the package glib bin which is automatically imported by the build system The glib pack age providing glib compile schemas can be specified with the glib parameter Both phases are executed after the install phase python build system Scheme Variable This variable is exported by guix build system python It implements the more or less standard build procedure used by Python packages which Chapter 5 Programming Interface 45 consists in running python setup py build and then python setup py install prefix gnu store For packages that install stand alone Python programs under bin it takes care of wrapping these programs so their PYTHONPATH environment variable points to all the Python libraries they depend on Which Python package is used can be specified with the python parameter perl build system Scheme Variable This variable is exported by guix build system perl It implements the standard build procedure for Perl packages which either consists in running perl Build PL prefix gnu store followed by Build and Build install or in running perl Makefile PL PREFIX gnu store followed by make and make install dependin
129. hine subsequent runs will be faster because the store that is created for test purposes will already have various things in cache Upon failure please email bug guix gnu org and attach the test suite log file When tests something scm fails please also attach the something log file available in the top level build directory Please specify the Guix version being used as well as version numbers of the dependencies see Section 2 2 Requirements page 4 in your message 2 4 Setting Up the Daemon Operations such as building a package or running the garbage collector are all performed by a specialized process the build daemon on behalf of clients Only the daemon may access the store and its associated database Thus any operation that manipulates the store goes through the daemon For instance command line tools such as guix package and guix build communicate with the daemon v a remote procedure calls to instruct it what to do The following sections explain how to prepare the build daemon s environment Also Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 for information on how to allow the daemon to download pre built binaries 2 4 1 Build Environment Setup In a standard multi user setup Guix and its daemon the guix daemon program are installed by the system administrator gnu store is owned by root and guix daemon runs as root Unprivileged users may use Guix tools to build packages or otherwise access the store and the daemon will do
130. hree services dmd root service type The guix dmd service procedure defines how the dmd service is extended Namely it returns a lt dmd service gt object that defines how guix daemon is started and stopped see Section 7 2 14 4 dmd Services page 123 account service type This extension for this service is computed by guix accounts which returns a list of user group and user account objects representing the build user accounts see Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 activation service type Here guix activation is a procedure that returns a gexp which is a code snippet to run at activation time e g when the service is booted A service of this type is instantiated like this service guix service type guix configuration build accounts 5 use substitutes f The second argument to the service form is a value representing the parameters of this specific service instance See guix configuration type page 100 for information about the guix configuration data type guix service type is quite simple because it extends other services but is not extensible itself The service type for an extensible service looks like this define udev service type service type name udev extensions list service extension dmd root service type udev dmd service Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 120 compose concatenate concatenate the list of rules extend lambda config rules match config lt ude
131. iables It is an error to define such environment variables in bashrc instead they should be defined in bash profile which is sourced only by log in shells See Section Bash Startup Files in The GNU Bash Reference Manual for details on Bash start up files Chapter 6 Utilities 76 Additionally more than one package may be specified in which case the union of the inputs for the given packages are used For example the command below spawns a shell where all of the dependencies of both Guile and Emacs are available guix environment guile emacs Sometimes an interactive shell session is not desired An arbitrary command may be invoked by placing the token to separate the command from the rest of the arguments guix environment guile make j4 In other situations it is more convenient to specify the list of packages needed in the environment For example the following command runs python from an environment con taining Python 2 7 and NumPy guix environment ad hoc python2 numpy python 2 7 python Furthermore one might want the dependencies of a package and also some additional packages that are not build time or runtime dependencies but are useful when developing nonetheless Because of this the ad hoc flag is positional Packages appearing before ad hoc are interpreted as packages whose dependencies will be added to the environment Packages appearing after are interpreted as packages that will be added to the envir
132. ices The gnu services lirc module provides the following service lirc service lirc lirc device 1 driver 1 Scheme Procedure config file 1 extra options Return a service that runs LIRC a daemon that decodes infrared signals from remote controls Optionally device driver and config file configuration file name may be specified See lircd manual for details Finally extra options is a list of additional command line options passed to lircd 7 2 8 Setuid Programs Some programs need to run with root privileges even when they are launched by unprivi leged users A notorious example is the passwd program which users can run to change their password and which needs to access the etc passwd and etc shadow files something normally restricted to root for obvious security reasons To address that these executa bles are setuid root meaning that they always run with root privileges see Section How Change Persona in The GNU C Library Reference Manual for more info about the setuid mechanisms The store itself cannot contain setuid programs that would be a security issue since any user on the system can write derivations that populate the store see Section 5 3 The Store Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 109 page 46 Thus a different mechanism is used instead of changing the setuid bit directly on files that are in the store we let the system administrator declare which programs should
133. id sleep mode suspend platform shutdown 106 Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 107 polkit service polkit polkit Scheme Procedure Return a service that runs the Polkit privilege management service which allows system administrators to grant access to privileged operations in a structured way By querying the Polkit service a privileged system component can know when it should grant additional capabilities to ordinary users For example an ordinary user can be granted the capability to suspend the system if the user is logged in locally upower service upower upower watts up pro f Scheme Procedure poll batteries t ignore lid f use percentage for policy f percentage low 10 percentage critical 3 percentage action 2 time low 1200 time critical 300 time action 120 critical power action hybrid sleep Return a service that runs upowerd a system wide monitor for power consump tion and battery levels with the given configuration settings It implements the org freedesktop UPower D Bus interface and is notably used by GNOME udisks service udisks udisks Scheme Procedure Return a service for UDisks a disk management daemon that provides user interfaces with notifications and ways to mount unmount disks Programs that talk to UDisks include the udisksctl command part of UDisks and GNOME Disks colord service colord colord Scheme Procedure Return a service that runs
134. iguration Data Type The type of a GRUB configuration declaration device This is a string denoting the boot device It must be a device name understood by the grub install command such as dev sda or hd0 see Section Invoking grub install in GNU GRUB Manual menu entries default A possibly empty list of menu entry objects see below denoting entries to appear in the GRUB boot menu in addition to the current system entry and the entry pointing to previous system generations default entry default 0 The index of the default boot menu entry Index 0 is for the current system s entry timeout default 5 The number of seconds to wait for keyboard input before booting Set to 0 to boot immediately and to 1 to wait indefinitely theme default default theme The grub theme object describing the theme to use Should you want to list additional boot menu entries via the menu entries field above you will need to create them with the menu entry form menu entry Data Type The type of an entry in the GRUB boot menu label The label to show in the menu e g GNU linux The Linux kernel to boot linux arguments default The list of extra Linux kernel command line arguments e g console ttyS0 initrd A G Expression or string denoting the file name of the initial RAM disk to use see Section 5 6 G Expressions page 53 Themes are created using the grub theme form which is not documented yet
135. ike Manipulate nu cleotide sequence alignments which hopefully gives the user a better idea of whether this is what they are looking for Descriptions should take between five and ten lines Use full sentences and avoid using acronyms without first introducing them Descriptions can include Texinfo markup which is useful to introduce ornaments such as code or dfn bullet lists or hyperlinks see Section Overview in GNU Texinfo However you should be careful when using some characters for example and curly braces which are the basic special characters in Texinfo see Section Special Characters in GNU Texinfo User interfaces such as guix package show take care of rendering it appropriately Synopses and descriptions are translated by volunteers at the Translation Project so that as many users as possible can read them in their native language User interfaces search them and display them in the language specified by the current locale Translation is a lot of work so as a packager please pay even more attention to your synopses and descriptions as every change may entail additional work for translators In order to help them it is possible to make recommendations or instructions visible to them by inserting special comments like this see Section xgettext Invocation in GNU Gettext Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 130 IRANSLATORS X11 resize and rotate should not be translated description ARandR is desi
136. in the store Use name as its store name or the basename of file if name is omitted When recursive is true the contents of file are added recursively if file designates a flat file and recursive is true its contents are added and its permission bits are kept The example below adds a file to the store under two different names run with store open connection mlet store monad a interned file README b interned file README LEGU MIN return list a b gt gnu store rwm README gnu store 44i LEGU MIN The guix packages module exports the following package related monadic proce dures package file package file system current system Monadic Procedure target 1 output out Return as a monadic value in the absolute file name of file within the output directory of package When file is omitted return the name of the output directory of package When target is true use it as a cross compilation target triplet package gt derivation package system Monadic Procedure package gt cross derivation package target system Monadic Procedure Monadic version of package derivation and package cross derivation see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 5 6 G Expressions So we have derivations which represent a sequence of build actions to be performed to produce an item in the store see Section 5 4 Derivations page 47 Those build actions are performed when ask
137. ing subsections to get a feel of what that means e The system does not yet provide full GNOME and KDE desktops Xfce and Enlight enment are available though if graphical desktop environments are your thing as well as a number of X11 window managers e Support for the Logical Volume Manager LVM is missing e Few system services are currently supported out of the box see Section 7 2 7 Services page 97 e More than 2 000 packages are available but you may occasionally find that a useful package is missing You ve been warned But more than a disclaimer this is an invitation to report issues and success stories and join us in improving it See Chapter 8 Contributing page 135 for more info 7 1 2 USB Stick Installation An installation image for USB sticks can be downloaded from ftp alpha gnu org gnu guix guixsd usb where system is one of x86 64 linux for a GNU Linux system on Intel AMD compatible 64 bit CPUs 1686 linux for a 32 bit GNU Linux system on Intel compatible CPUs This image contains a single partition with the tools necessary for an installation It is meant to be copied as is to a large enough USB stick To copy the image to a USB stick follow these steps 1 Decompress the image using the xz command xz d guixsd usb install 0 9 0 system xz 2 Insert a USB stick of 1 GiB or more in your machine and determine its device name Assuming that USB stick is known as dev sdX copy the image with
138. ing the daemon to actually build the derivations they are run by the daemon in a container see Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 Chapter 5 Programming Interface 54 It should come as no surprise that we like to write those build actions in Scheme When we do that we end up with two strata of Scheme code the host code code that defines packages talks to the daemon etc and the build code code that actually performs build actions such as making directories invoking make etc To describe a derivation and its build actions one typically needs to embed build code inside host code It boils down to manipulating build code as data and Scheme s homoiconicity code has a direct representation as data comes in handy for that But we need more than Scheme s normal quasiquote mechanism to construct build expressions The guix gexp module implements G expressions a form of S expressions adapted to build expressions G expressions or gexps consist essentially in three syntactic forms gexp ungexp and ungexp splicing or simply amp and which are comparable respectively to quasiquote unquote and unquote splicing see Section Expression Syntax in GNU Guile Reference Manual However there are major differences e Gexps are meant to be written to a file and run or manipulated by other processes e When a high level object such as a package or derivation is unquoted inside a gexp the result is as i
139. ion If you do want to have a preset password for an account then this field must contain the encrypted password as a string See Section crypt in The GNU C Library Reference Manual for more information on password encryption and Section Encryption in GNU Guile Reference Manual for information on Guile s crypt procedure User group declarations are even simpler user group name students user group Data Type This type is for well user groups There are just a few fields name The group s name id default f The group identifier a number If 4f a new number is automatically allocated when the group is created system default This Boolean value indicates whether the group is a system group System groups have low numerical IDs password default What user groups can have a password Well apparently yes Unless f this field specifies the group s password For convenience a variable lists all the basic user groups one may expect Abase groups Scheme Variable This is the list of basic user groups that users and or packages expect to be present on the system This includes groups such as root wheel and users as well as groups used to control access to specific devices such as audio disk and cdrom Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 96 Abase user accounts Scheme Variable This is the list of basic system accounts that programs may ex
140. ions provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents unmodified and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers The combined work need only contain one copy of this License and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it in parentheses the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known or else a unique number Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work In the combination you must combine any sections Entitled History in the vari ous original documents forming one section Entitled History likewise combine any sections Entitled Acknowledgements and any sections Entitled Dedications You must delete all sections Entitled Endorsements 6 COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents i
141. is accessible for both reading and writing via the exchange directory guix environment container share HOME exchange guile guile It also supports all of the common build options that guix build supports see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 6 11 Invoking guix publish The purpose of guix publish is to enable users to easily share their store with others which can then use it as a substitute server see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 When guix publish runs it spawns an HTTP server which allows anyone with network access to obtain substitutes from it This means that any machine running Guix can also act as if it were a build farm since the HTTP interface is compatible with Hydra the software behind the hydra gnu org build farm For security each substitute is signed allowing recipients to check their authenticity and integrity see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 Because guix publish uses the system s signing key which is only readable by the system administrator it must be started as root the user option makes it drop root privileges early on The signing key pair must be generated before guix publish is launched using guix archive generate key see Section 3 7 Invoking guix archive page 24 The general syntax is guix publish options Running guix publish without any additional arguments will spawn an HTTP server on port 8080 guix publish Once a publishing server has been autho
142. is case in addition to setting the name service switch of the operating system declaration you also need to use avahi service see Section 7 2 7 2 Networking Services page 101 or 6desktop services which includes it see Section 7 2 7 4 Desktop Services page 104 Doing this makes nss mdns accessible to the name service cache daemon see Section 7 2 7 1 Base Services page 98 For convenience the following variables provide typical NSS configurations Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 111 Adefault nss Scheme Variable This is the default name service switch configuration a name service switch object Amdns host lookup nss Scheme Variable This is the name service switch configuration with support for host name lookup over multicast DNS mDNS for host names ending in Local The reference for name service switch configuration is given below It is a direct mapping of the C library s configuration file format so please refer to the C library manual for more information see Section NSS Configuration File in The GNU C Library Reference Manual Compared to libe s NSS configuration file format it has the advantage not only of adding this warm parenthetic feel that we like but also static checks you ll know about syntax errors and typos as soon as you run guix system name service switch Data Type This is the data type representation the configuration of libc s name service switch NSS Each field below represents one of the
143. istens for connections on all the network interfaces otherwise interfaces must be a list of host names or addresses allow empty passwords specifies whether to accept log ins with empty passwords and root login specifies whether to accept log ins as root The other options should be self descriptive Afacebook host aliases Scheme Variable This variable contains a string for use in etc hosts see Section Host Names in The GNU C Library Reference Manual Each line contains a entry that maps a known server name of the Facebook on line service e g www facebook com to the local host 127 0 0 1 or its IPv6 equivalent 1 Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 103 This variable is typically used in the hosts file field of an operating system dec laration see Section 7 2 2 operating system Reference page 89 use modules gnu guix operating system host name mymachine hosts file Create a etc hosts file with aliases for localhost and mymachine as well as for Facebook servers plain file hosts string append local host aliases host name facebook host aliases This mechanism can prevent programs running locally such as Web browsers from accessing Facebook The gnu services avahi provides the following definition avahi service avahi avahi host name 4 publish Scheme Procedure zt ipv4 t ipv6 zt wide area 1 domains to browse Return a service that run
144. istribution 128 7 6 1 Software Freedom The GNU operating system has been developed so that users can have freedom in their computing GNU is free software meaning that users have the four essential freedoms to run the program to study and change the program in source code form to redistribute exact copies and to distribute modified versions Packages found in the GNU distribution provide only software that conveys these four freedoms In addition the GNU distribution follow the free software distribution guidelines Among other things these guidelines reject non free firmware recommendations of non free soft ware and discuss ways to deal with trademarks and patents Some packages contain a small and optional subset that violates the above guidelines for instance because this subset is itself non free code When that happens the offending items are removed with appropriate patches or code snippets in the package definition s origin form see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 That way guix build source returns the freed source rather than the unmodified upstream source 7 6 2 Package Naming A package has actually two names associated with it First there is the name of the Scheme variable the one following define public By this name the package can be made known in the Scheme code for instance as input to another package Second there is the string in the name field of a package definition This name is used by pac
145. it has uk UA utf8 but not say uk UA UTF 8 7 2 6 1 Locale Data Compatibility Considerations operating system declarations provide a locale libcs field to specify the GNU libc packages that are used to compile locale declarations see Section 7 2 2 operating system Reference page 89 Why would I care you may ask Well it turns out that the binary format of locale data is occasionally incompatible from one libc version to another For instance a program linked against libc version 2 21 is unable to read locale data produced with libc 2 22 worse that program aborts instead of simply ignoring the incom patible locale data Similarly a program linked against libc 2 22 can read most but not all the locale data from libc 2 21 specifically LC COLLATE data is incompatible thus calls to setlocale may fail but programs will not abort The problem in GuixSD is that users have a lot of freedom They can choose whether and when to upgrade software in their profiles and might be using a libc version different from the one the system administrator used to build the system wide locale data Fortunately unprivileged users can also install their own locale data and define GUIX_LOCPATH accordingly see locales and locpath page 11 Still it is best if the system wide locale data at run current system locale is built for all the libc versions actually in use on the system so that all the programs can access it this is esp
146. it on their behalf ensuring that the store is kept in a consistent state and allowing built packages to be shared among users When guix daemon runs as root you may not want package build processes themselves to run as root too for obvious security reasons To avoid that a special pool of build users should be created for use by build processes started by the daemon These build users need not have a shell and a home directory they will just be used when the daemon drops root privileges in build processes Having several such users allows the daemon to launch distinct build processes under separate UIDs which guarantees that they do not interfere with each other an essential feature since builds are regarded as pure functions see Chapter 1 Introduction page 2 Chapter 2 Installation 6 On a GNU Linux system a build user pool may be created like this using Bash syntax and the shadow commands groupadd system guixbuild 4 for i in seq w 1 10 do useradd g guixbuild G guixbuild N d var empty s which nologin N c Guix build user i system N guixbuilder i done The number of build users determines how many build jobs may run in parallel as specified by the max jobs option see Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 The guix daemon program may then be run as root with the following command guix daemon build users group guixbuild This way the daemon starts build processes in a chroot un
147. itor you need Emacs empowered by the wonderful Geiser Geiser allows for interactive and incremental development from within Emacs code com pilation and evaluation from within buffers access to on line documentation docstrings context sensitive completion M to jump to an object definition a REPL to try out your code and more see Section Introduction in Geiser User Manual For convenient Guix development make sure to augment Guile s load path so that it finds source files from your checkout Assuming the Guix checkout is in src guix add to list geiser guile load path src guix To actually edit the code Emacs already has a neat Scheme mode But in addition to that you must not miss Paredit It provides facilities to directly operate on the syntax tree such as raising an s expression or wrapping it swallowing or rejecting the following s expression etc GNU Guix also comes with a minor mode that provides some additional functionality for Scheme buffers see Section 4 7 Emacs Development page 35 Chapter 8 Contributing 137 8 4 Coding Style In general our code follows the GNU Coding Standards see GNU Coding Standards However they do not say much about Scheme so here are some additional rules 8 4 1 Programming Paradigm Scheme code in Guix is written in a purely functional style One exception is code that in volves input output and procedures that implement low level concepts such as the memoize
148. ix build page 60 For example assuming the new package is called gnew you may run this command from the Guix build tree see Section 8 2 Running Guix Before It Is Installed page 135 pre inst env guix build gnew keep failed Using keep failed makes it easier to debug build failures since it provides access to the failed build tree Another useful command line option when debugging is 1og file to access the build log If the package is unknown to the guix command it may be that the source file contains a syntax error or lacks a define public clause to export the package variable To figure it out you may load the module from Guile to get more information about the actual error pre inst env guile c use modules gnu packages gnew Once your package builds correctly please send us a patch see Chapter 8 Contributing page 135 Well if you need help we will be happy to help you too Once the patch is com mitted in the Guix repository the new package automatically gets built on the supported platforms by our continuous integration system Users can obtain the new package definition simply by running guix pull see Section 3 6 Invoking guix pull page 24 When hydra gnu org is done building the package installing the package automatically downloads binaries from there see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 The only place where human intervention is needed is to review and apply the patch Chapter 7 GNU D
149. ix can determine which packages are still referenced by the user profiles and remove those that are provably no longer referenced see Section 3 5 Invoking guix gc page 22 Users may also explicitly remove old generations of their profile so that the packages they refer to can be collected Finally Guix takes a purely functional approach to package management as described in the introduction see Chapter 1 Introduction page 2 Each gnu store package directory name contains a hash of all the inputs that were used to build that package compiler Chapter 3 Package Management 14 libraries build scripts etc This direct correspondence allows users to make sure a given package installation matches the current state of their distribution It also helps maximize build reproducibility thanks to the isolated build environments that are used a given build is likely to yield bit identical files when performed on different machines see Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 This foundation allows Guix to support transparent binary source deployment When a pre built binary for a gnu store item is available from an external source a substitute Guix just downloads it and unpacks it otherwise it builds the package from source locally see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 Control over the build environment is a feature that is also useful for developers The guix environment command allows developers of a package to quickly set
150. ix import cpan command This is primarily of interest to devel opers See Section Guile Preparations in GnuTLS Guile Unless disable daemon was passed to configure the following packages are also needed e SQLite 3 e libbz2 e GCC s g with support for the C 11 standard When a working installation of the Nix package manager is available you can instead configure Guix with disable daemon In that case Nix replaces the three dependencies above Guix is compatible with Nix so it is possible to share the same store between both To do so you must pass configure not only the same with store dir value but also the Chapter 2 Installation 5 same localstatedir value The latter is essential because it specifies where the database that stores metadata about the store is located among other things The default values for Nix are with store dir nix store and localstatedir nix var Note that disable daemon is not required if your goal is to share the store with Nix 2 3 Running the Test Suite After a successful configure and make run it is a good idea to run the test suite It can help catch issues with the setup or environment or bugs in Guix itself and really reporting test failures is a good way to help improve the software To run the test suite type make check Test cases can run in parallel you can use the j option of GNU make to speed things up The first run may take a few minutes on a recent mac
151. kage management commands such as guix package and guix build Both are usually the same and correspond to the lowercase conversion of the project name chosen upstream with underscores replaced with hyphens For instance GNUnet is available as gnunet and SDL net as sdl net We do not add lib prefixes for library packages unless these are already part of the official project name But see Section 7 6 5 Python Modules page 130 and Section 7 6 6 Perl Modules page 130 for special rules concerning modules for the Python and Perl languages Font package names are handled differently see Section 7 6 7 Fonts page 130 7 6 3 Version Numbers We usually package only the latest version of a given free software project But sometimes for instance for incompatible library versions two or more versions of the same package are needed These require different Scheme variable names We use the name as defined in Section 7 6 2 Package Naming page 128 for the most recent version previous versions use the same name suffixed by and the smallest prefix of the version number that may distinguish the two versions The name inside the package definition is the same for all versions of a package and does not contain any version number For instance the versions 2 24 20 and 3 9 12 of GTK may be packaged as follows define public gtk package name gtk version 3 9 12 Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 129 pied define public gtk 2
152. les see Section 7 5 Package Modules page 126 Sometimes packages have propagated inputs these are dependencies that automatically get installed along with the required package see package propagated inputs page 40 for information about propagated inputs in package definitions An example is the GNU MPC library its C header files refer to those of the GNU MPFR library which in turn refer to those of the GMP library Thus when installing MPC the MPFR and GMP libraries also get installed in the profile removing MPC also removes MPFR and GMP unless they had also been explicitly installed independently Besides packages sometimes rely on the definition of environment variables for their search paths see explanation of search paths below Any missing or possibly incorrect environment variable definitions are reported here Finally when installing a GNU package the tool reports the availability of a newer upstream version In the future it may provide the option of installing directly from the upstream version even if that version is not yet in the distri bution install from expression exp e exp Install the package exp evaluates to exp must be a Scheme expression that evaluates to a package object This option is notably useful to disambiguate between same named variants of a package with expressions such as gnu packages base guile final Note that this option installs the first output of the specified
153. libc to be extended with new name lookup methods for system databases which includes host names service names user accounts and more see Section Name Service Switch in The GNU C Library Reference Manual The NSS configuration specifies for each system database which lookup method is to be used and how the various methods are chained together for instance under which circumstances NSS should try the next method in the list The NSS configuration is given in the name service switch field of operating system declarations see Section 7 2 2 operating system Reference page 89 As an example the declaration below configures the NSS to use the nss mdns back end which supports host name lookups over multicast DNS mDNS for host names ending in local name service switch hosts list files first check etc hosts If the above did not succeed try with mdns_minimal name service name mdns minimal mdns minimal is authoritative for local When it returns not found no need to try the next methods reaction lookup specification not found gt return 3 Then fall back to DNS name service name dns Finally try with the full mdns name service name mdns Don t worry the mdns host lookup nss variable see below contains this configura tion so you won t have to type it if all you want is to have 1ocal host lookup working Note that in th
154. lier see Section 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System page 85 results in a service graph like this ssh daemon console fonttty console tont ttys console font tty4 console tontty3 console font ty2 console fonttty loopback NL nscd guix daemon syslogd networking I term tty6 I term tty5 term tty4 I term tty3 l term tty2 term tyt user processes udev host name file system dev pts file system run user user file systems file system run systemd file system gnu store file system dev shm root file system You can actually generate such a graph for any operating system definition using the guix system dmd graph command see system dmd graph page 117 The dmd root service is a service object representing PID 1 of type dmd root service type it can be extended by passing it lists of lt dmd service gt objects Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 124 dmd service Data Type The data type representing a service managed by dmd provision This is a list of symbols denoting what the service provides These are the names that may be passed to deco start deco status and similar commands see Section Invoking deco in GNU dmd Man ual See Section Slots of services in GNU dmd Manual for details requirements default List of symbols denoting the dmd services this one depends on respawn default stt Whether to rest
155. ling back from the first generation that actually contains installed packages the profile is made to point to the zeroth generation which contains no files apart from its own meta data Installing removing or upgrading packages from a generation that has been rolled back to overwrites previous future generations Thus the history of a profile s generations is always linear switch generation pattern S pattern Switch to a particular generation defined by pattern pattern may be either a generation number or a number prefixed with or The latter means move forward backward by a specified number of generations For example if you want to return to the latest generation after roll back use switch generation 1 The difference between roll back and switch generation 1 is that switch generation will not make a zeroth generation so if a specified gen eration does not exist the current generation will not be changed search paths kind Report environment variable definitions in Bash syntax that may be needed in order to use the set of installed packages These environment variables are used to specify search paths for files used by some of the installed packages For example GCC needs the CPATH and LIBRARY PATH environment variables to be defined so it can look for headers and libraries in the user s profile see Section Environment Variables in Using the GNU Compiler Collection GCC If GCC and
156. lt substitute urls The list of URLs where to look for substitutes by default extra options default List of extra command line options for guix daemon lsof default Isof lsh default Ish The lsof and lsh packages to use guix service config Scheme Procedure Return a service that runs the Guix build daemon according to config udev service udev udev Scheme Procedure Run udev which populates the dev directory dynamically console keymap service file Scheme Procedure Return a service to load console keymap from file using loadkeys command guix publish service guix guix port 80 host Scheme Procedure localhost Return a service that runs guix publish listening on host and port see Section 6 11 Invoking guix publish page 78 This assumes that etc guix already contains a signing key pair as created by guix archive generate key see Section 3 7 Invoking guix archive page 24 If that is not the case the service will fail to start 7 2 7 2 Networking Services The gnu services networking module provides services to configure the network inter face dhcp client service dhcp isc dhcp Scheme Procedure Return a service that runs dhcp a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol DHCP client on all the non loopback network interfaces static networking service interface ip gateway 1 Scheme Procedure name services Return a service that starts interface with address ip
157. ly referred to as bind but that name denotes an unrelated procedure in Guile Thus we use this somewhat cryptic symbol inherited from the Haskell language Chapter 5 Programming Interface 52 mbegin monad mexp Scheme System Bind mexp and the following monadic expressions in sequence returning the result of the last expression This is akin to mlet except that the return values of the monadic expressions are ignored In that sense it is analogous to begin but applied to monadic expressions The guix monads module provides the state monad which allows an additional value the state to be threaded through monadic procedure calls Astate monad Scheme Variable The state monad Procedures in the state monad can access and change the state that is threaded Consider the example below The square procedure returns a value in the state monad It returns the square of its argument but also increments the current state value define square x mlet state monad count current state mbegin state monad set current state 1 count return x x run with state sequence state monad map square iota 3 0 0 1 4 gt 3 When run through state monad we obtain that additional state value which is the number of square calls current state Monadic Procedure Return the current state as a monadic value Set current state value Monadic Procedure Set the current state to value and retu
158. m a base 32 string file name default sf The file name under which the source code should be saved When this is 4f a sensible default value will be used in most cases In case the source is fetched from a URL the file name from the URL will be used For version control checkouts it s recommended to provide the file name explicitly because the default is not very descriptive Chapter 5 Programming Interface 42 patches default O A list of file names containing patches to be applied to the source snippet default A quoted piece of code that will be run in the source directory to make any modifications which is sometimes more convenient than a patch patch flags default p1 A list of command line flags that should be passed to the patch command patch inputs default f Input packages or derivations to the patching process When this is f the usual set of inputs necessary for patching are provided such as GNU Patch modules default O A list of Guile modules that should be loaded during the patching process and while running the code in the snippet field imported modules default The list of Guile modules to import in the patch derivation for use by the snippet patch guile default f The Guile package that should be used in the patching process When this is a sensible default is used 5 2 Build Systems Each package definition specifies a build system and argume
159. mat to standard output the service extension graph of the operating system defined in file see Section 7 2 14 1 Service Composition page 117 for more information on service extensions Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 117 The command guix system extension graph file dot Tpdf gt services pdf produces a PDF file showing the extension relations among services dmd graph Emit in Dot Graphviz format to standard output the dependency graph of dmd services of the operating system defined in file See Section 7 2 14 4 dmd Services page 123 for more information and for an example graph 7 2 14 Defining Services The previous sections show the available services and how one can combine them in an operating system declaration But how do we define them in the first place And what is a service anyway 7 2 14 1 Service Composition Here we define a service as broadly something that extends the operating system s func tionality Often a service is a process a daemon started when the system boots a secure shell server a Web server the Guix build daemon etc Sometimes a service is a daemon whose execution can be triggered by another daemon e g an FTP server started by inetd or a D Bus service activated by dbus daemon Occasionally a service does not map to a daemon For instance the account service collects user accounts and makes sure they exist when the system runs the udev service collects device managem
160. mes perl libwww 7 6 7 Fonts For fonts that are in general not installed by a user for typesetting purposes or that are distributed as part of a larger software package we rely on the general packaging rules for software for instance this applies to the fonts delivered as part of the X Org system or fonts that are part of TeX Live To make it easier for a user to search for fonts names for other packages containing only fonts are constructed as follows independently of the upstream package name The name of a package containing only one font family starts with font it is followed by the foundry name and a dash if the foundry is known and the font family name in which spaces are replaced by dashes and as usual all upper case letters are transformed to lower case For example the Gentium font family by SIL is packaged under the name font sil gentium For a package containing several font families the name of the collection is used in the place of the font family name For instance the Liberation fonts consist of three families Liberation Sans Liberation Serif and Liberation Mono These could be packaged separately under the names font liberation sans and so on but as they are distributed together under a common name we prefer to package them together as font liberation In the case where several formats of the same font family or font collection are packaged separately a short form of the format prepended by a dash is added
161. module For more information on bootstrapping see Section 7 7 Bootstrapping page 131 7 6 Packaging Guidelines The GNU distribution is nascent and may well lack some of your favorite packages This sec tion describes how you can help make the distribution grow See Chapter 8 Contributing page 135 for additional information on how you can help Free software packages are usually distributed in the form of source code tarballs typically tar gz files that contain all the source files Adding a package to the distribution means essentially two things adding a recipe that describes how to build the package including a list of other packages required to build it and adding package meta data along with that recipe such as a description and licensing information In Guix all this information is embodied in package definitions Package definitions provide a high level view of the package They are written using the syntax of the Scheme programming language in fact for each package we define a variable bound to the package definition and export that variable from a module see Section 7 5 Package Modules page 126 However in depth Scheme knowledge is not a prerequisite for creating packages For more information on package definitions see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 Once a package definition is in place stored in a file in the Guix source tree it can be tested using the guix build command see Section 6 1 Invoking gu
162. n GNU Linux the default is to boot directly to the kernel this has the advantage of requiring only a very tiny root disk image since the host s store can then be mounted The full boot option forces a complete boot sequence starting with the bootloader This requires more disk space since a root image containing at least the kernel initrd and bootloader data files must be created The image size option can be used to specify the image s size Return a virtual machine or disk image of the operating system declared in file that stands alone Use the image size option to specify the size of the image When using vm image the returned image is in qcow2 format which the QEMU emulator can efficiently use When using disk image a raw disk image is produced it can be copied as is to a USB stick for instance Assuming dev sdc is the device corresponding to a USB stick one can copy the image on it using the following command dd if guix system disk image my os scm of dev sdc Return a script to run the operating system declared in file within a container Containers are a set of lightweight isolation mechanisms provided by the ker nel Linux libre Containers are substantially less resource demanding than full virtual machines since the kernel shared objects and other resources can be shared with the host system this also means they provide thinner isolation Currently the script must be run as root in order to support more
163. n all other respects You may extract a single document from such a collection and distribute it individu ally under this License provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License 145 T AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium is called an aggregate if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation s users beyond what the individual works permit When the Document is included in an aggregate this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate the Document s Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate 8 TRANSLATION Iranslation is considered a kind of modification so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4 Replacing Inva
164. n independent builds of the package should yield the exact same result bit for bit if a server provides a binary different from the one obtained locally it may be either corrupt or malicious We know that the hash that shows up in gnu store file names is the hash of all the inputs of the process that built the file or directory compilers libraries build scripts etc see Chapter 1 Introduction page 2 Assuming deterministic build processes one store file name should map to exactly one build output guix challenge checks whether there is indeed a single mapping by comparing the build outputs of several independent builds of any given store item The command s output looks like this guix challenge substitute urls http hydra gnu org http guix example org updating list of substitutes from http hydra gnu org 100 0 updating list of substitutes from http guix example org 100 0 gnu store openssl 1 0 2d contents differ local hash 0725122r5jnzazaacncwsvp9kgf42266ayyp814v7djxs7nk963q http hydra gnu org nar openssl 1 0 2d 0725122r5jnzazaacncwsvp9kgf42266ayyp814v7djxs7nk963q http guix example org nar openssl 1 0 2d 1zy4fmaaqcnjrzzajkdn3f5gmjk754b43qkq4711byak9z0qjyim gnu store git 2 5 0 contents differ local hash OOp3bmryhjxrhpn2gxs2fy0ai51nip05197205pgbk5ra395hyha http hydra gnu org nar git 2 5 0 069nb85bv4d4a6slrwjdy8vicn4cwspm3kdbmyb81d6zckj3nq9f http guix example org
165. names 97 TOS Cas NM TTE 99 E EE 109 SS el em area eSI a ende 110 NSS ul RIPE eye e p gura ee 110 O Wee D P package conversion esses 66 package definition editing 64 package import cee eee 66 package module search path 126 package outputs esses 21 SNE 91 PALCHES RT 38 GARE 123 pluggable authentication modules 91 pre built binaries 0 0 e eee eee 20 profile declaration esses 16 profile manifest 16 propagated inputs esses 15 40 DYDl aiseee E der 66 read eval print Joan 29 136 repairing the store 24 replacements of packages for grafts 125 REP EE 29 136 reproducibility 00 e eee 13 reproducible build environments 75 reproducible bilde 8 13 79 roll back of the operating system 88 149 S search paths 588 s err brem cee 14 17 S GUTILy EE 20 security updates epe ELE AR sakes 125 service extensions eee eees 117 service type c ki ubi hg RR E E HELP Hn cay 121 service TYPES sels e re hec ENDE AEAEE 118 SELVICES enda pied Ghd EEG AA E MP ERE DAS 117 setuid programs 2 0 eee eee ee eee 108 signing archives pli seid e P VERLO ade due 25 state monad EE 52 Be e ERR EE RATES KDE ee gr 2 46 store csse 9l ERIS RUP EERENS 46 strata of codes ee ENEE ALE Ee edad 53 Subst uber A See Deua cbe Gothi
166. nar git 2 5 0 Omdqa9wip6cmli6976v4wiO0sw9r4pbprkj71zfd1877wkiic9c73 gnu store pius 2 1 1 contents differ local hash Ok4v3m9zizp8xzzizb7d8kjj72f9172xv078sq4wl73vnq9ig3ax http hydra gnu org nar pius 2 1 1 Ok4v3m9zizp8xzzizb7d8kjj72f9172xv078sq4wl73vnq9ig3ax http guix example org nar pius 2 1 1 icy25xla4fzqbrkOpmvc8xhwyffnqz95h2bpvqsz2mpvlbccyOgs Chapter 6 Utilities 80 In this example guix challenge first scans the store to determine the set of locally built derivations as opposed to store items that were downloaded from a substitute server and then queries all the substitute servers It then reports those store items for which the servers obtained a result different from the local build As an example guix example org always gets a different answer Conversely hydra gnu org agrees with local builds except in the case of Git This might indicate that the build process of Git is non deterministic meaning that its output varies as a function of various things that Guix does not fully control in spite of building packages in isolated environments see Section 3 1 Features page 13 Most common sources of non determinism include the addition of timestamps in build results the inclusion of random numbers and directory listings sorted by inode number See http reproducible debian net howto for more information To find out what s wrong with this Git binary we can do something along these lines see Section 3
167. ne whether to split the package see Section 3 4 Packages with Multiple Outputs page 21 and which optional dependencies should be used For important changes check that dependent package if applicable are not affected by the change guix refresh list dependent package will help you do that see Section 6 6 Invoking guix refresh page 68 Check whether the package s build process is deterministic This typically means check ing whether an independent build of the package yields the exact same result that you obtained bit for bit A simple way to do that is with guix challenge see Section 6 12 Invoking guix challenge page 79 You may run it once the package has been committed and built by hydra gnu org to check whether it obtains the same result as you did Better yet Find another machine that can build it and run guix publish When posting a patch to the mailing list use PATCH as a subject You may use your email client or the git send mail command Chapter 9 Acknowledgments 139 9 Acknowledgments Guix is based on the Nix package manager which was designed and implemented by Eelco Dolstra with contributions from other people see the nix AUTHORS file in Guix 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
168. ng the execution of exp e g guix build utils guix build gnu build system exp is evaluated in an environment where Zoutputs is bound to a list of output path pairs and where build inputs is bound to a list of string output path pairs made from inputs Optionally env vars is a list of string pairs specifying the name and value of environment variables visible to the builder The builder terminates by passing the result of exp to exit thus when exp returns f the build is considered to have failed exp is built using guile for build a derivation When guile for build is omitted or is f the value of the guile for build fluid is used instead See the derivation procedure for the meaning of references graphs allowed references local build and substitutable Here s an example of a single output derivation that creates a directory containing one file let builder let out assoc ref foutputs out mkdir out create gnu store goo call with output file string append out test lambda p display hello guix p build expression gt derivation store goo builder lt derivation gnu store goo drv gt gt Chapter 5 Programming Interface 50 5 5 The Store Monad The procedures that operate on the store described in the previous sections all take an open connection to the build daemon as their first argument Although the underlying model is functional they either
169. ng you to eventually build them even without network access It is an extension of the source option and can accept one of the following optional argument values package This value causes the sources option to behave in the same way as the source option all Build all packages source derivations including any source that might be listed as inputs This is the default value guix build sources tzdata The following derivations will be built gnu store tzdata2015b tar gz drv gnu store tzcode2015b tar gz drv transitive Build all packages source derivations as well as all source deriva tions for packages transitive inputs This can be used e g to prefetch package source for later offline building guix build sources transitive tzdata The following derivations will be built gnu store tzcode2015b tar gz drv gnu store findutils 4 4 2 tar xz drv gnu store grep 2 21 tar xz drv gnu store coreutils 8 23 tar xz drv gnu store make 4 1 tar xz drv Chapter 6 Utilities 62 gnu store bash 4 3 tar xz drv system system s system Attempt to build for system e g i686 linux instead of the host s system type An example use of this is on Linux based systems which can emulate differ ent personalities For instance passing system i686 linux on an x86 64 linux system allows users to build packages in a complete 32 bit environment target triplet Cross build for triplet
170. nitrd you would like to use The gnu system linux initrd module provides two ways to build an initrd the high level base initrd procedure and the low level expression gt initrd procedure The base initrd procedure is intended to cover most common uses For example if you want to add a bunch of kernel modules to be loaded at boot time you can define the initrd field of the operating system declaration like this initrd lambda file systems rest Create a standard initrd that has modules foo ko and bar ko as well as their dependencies in addition to the modules available by default apply base initrd file systems extra modules foo bar rest The base initrd procedure also handles common use cases that involves using the system as a QEMU guest or as a live system whose root file system is volatile base initrd file systems qemu networking 1 Monadic Procedure virtio f volatile root 4 extra modules mapped devices O Return a monadic derivation that builds a generic initrd file systems is a list of file systems to be mounted by the initrd possibly in addition to the root file system specified on the kernel command line via root mapped devices is a list of de vice mappings to realize before file systems are mounted see Section 7 2 4 Mapped Devices page 93 When qemu networking is true set up networking with the standard QEMU param eters When virtio is true
171. nting their editor at the source file containing the definition of the specified packages For instance guix edit gcc 4 8 vim launches the program specified in the EDITOR environment variable to edit the recipe of GCC 4 8 4 and that of Vim If you are using Emacs note that the Emacs user interface provides similar functionality in the package info and package list buffers created by M x guix search by name and similar commands see Section 4 2 1 Emacs Commands page 28 Chapter 6 Utilities 65 6 3 Invoking guix download When writing a package definition developers typically need to download the package s source tarball compute its SHA256 hash and write that hash in the package definition see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 The guix download tool helps with this task it downloads a file from the given URI adds it to the store and prints both its file name in the store and its SHA256 hash The fact that the downloaded file is added to the store saves bandwidth when the developer eventually tries to build the newly defined package with guix build the source tarball will not have to be downloaded again because it is already in the store It is also a convenient way to temporarily stash files which may be deleted eventually see Section 3 5 Invoking guix gc page 22 The guix download command supports the same URIs as used in package definitions In particular it supports mirror URIs https URIs HTTP o
172. nts and groups See Section 7 2 5 User Accounts page 94 skeletons default default skeletons A monadic list of pairs of target file name and files These are the files that will be used as skeletons as new accounts are created For instance a valid value may look like this mlet store monad bashrc text file bashrc export PATH HOME guix profile bin return bashrc bashrc issue default default issue A string denoting the contents of the etc issue file which is what displayed when users log in on a text console packages default base packages The set of packages installed in the global profile which is accessible at run current system profile The default set includes core utilities but it is good practice to install non core utilities in user profiles see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 timezone A timezone identifying string e g Europe Paris locale default en_US utf8 The name of the default locale see Section Locale Names in The GNU C Library Reference Manual See Section 7 2 6 Locales page 96 for more information locale definitions default default locale definitions The list of locale definitions to be compiled and that may be used at run time See Section 7 2 6 Locales page 96 locale libcs default list glibc The list of GNU libc packages whose locale data and tools are used to build the locale definitions See Section 7 2 6 Lo
173. nts for that build system see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 This build system field represents the build procedure of the package as well implicit dependencies of that build procedure Build systems are lt build system gt objects The interface to create and manipulate them is provided by the guix build system module and actual build systems are exported by specific modules Under the hood build systems first compile package objects to bags A bag is like a package but with less ornamentation in other words a bag is a lower level representation of a package which includes all the inputs of that package including some that were im plicitly added by the build system This intermediate representation is then compiled to a derivation see Section 5 4 Derivations page 47 Build systems accept an optional list of arguments In package definitions these are passed via the arguments field see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 They are typically keyword arguments see Section Optional Arguments in GNU Guile Reference Manual The value of these arguments is usually evaluated in the build stratum i e by a Guile process launched by the daemon see Section 5 4 Derivations page 47 The main build system is gnu build system which implements the standard build proce dure for GNU packages and many other packages It is provided by the guix build system gnu module Chapter 5 Programming Interface 43
174. o buffer The interface of an info buffer is similar to the interface of help mode see Section Help Mode in The GNU Emacs Manual Info buffer contains some buttons as usual you may use TAB S TAB to move between buttons see Section Mouse References in The GNU Emacs Manual which can be used to e in a package info buffer install remove a package jump to a package location browse home page of a package describe packages from Inputs fields e in a generation info buffer remove a generation switch to a generation list packages installed in a generation jump to a generation directory m It is also possible to copy a button label a link to an URL or a file by pressing c on a button 4 2 5 Configuration There are many variables you can modify to change the appearance or behavior of Emacs user interface Some of these variables are described in this section Also you can use Custom Interface see Section Easy Customization in The GNU Emacs Manual to ex plore set variables not all and faces 4 2 5 1 Guile and Build Options guix guile program If you have some special needs for starting a Guile process you may set this variable for example setq guix guile program bin guile no auto compile guix use substitutes Has the same meaning as no substitutes option see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 guix dry run Ha
175. odules out of the list of dependencies The command command below imports meta data for the Acme Boolean Perl module guix import cpan Acme Boolean Import meta data from CRAN the central repository for the GNU R statistical and graphical environment Information is extracted from the HTML package description The command command below imports meta data for the Cairo R package guix import cran Cairo Import meta data from a local copy of the source of the Nixpkgs distribu tion Package definitions in Nixpkgs are typically written in a mixture of Nix language and Bash code This command only imports the high level pack age structure that is written in the Nix language It normally includes all the basic fields of a package definition When importing a GNU package the synopsis and descriptions are replaced by their canonical upstream variant As an example the command below imports the package definition of Libre Office more precisely it imports the definition of the package bound to the libreoffice top level attribute guix import nix path to nixpkgs libreoffice Import meta data from Haskell community s central package archive Hackage Information is taken from Cabal files and includes all the relevant information including package dependencies Specific command line options are stdin s Read a Cabal file from the standard input no test dependencies t Do not include dependencies required by the test
176. onment directly For example the following command creates a Guix development environment that additionally includes Git and strace guix environment guix ad hoc git strace Sometimes it is desirable to isolate the environment as much as possible for maximal purity and reproducibility In particular when using Guix on a host distro that is not GuixSD it is desirable to prevent access to usr bin and other system wide resources from the development environment For example the following command spawns a Guile REPL in a container where only the store and the current working directory are mounted guix environment ad hoc container guile guile Note The container option requires Linux libre 3 19 or newer The available options are summarized below expression expr e expr Create an environment for the package or list of packages that expr evaluates to For example running guix environment e gnu packages maths petsc openmpi starts a shell with the environment for this specific variant of the PETSc pack age Running guix environment ad hoc e gnu base packages starts a shell with all the GuixSD base packages available load file 1 file Create an environment for the package or list of packages that the code within file evaluates to As an example file might contain a definition like this see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 Chapter 6 Utilities 77 ad hoc pure use mod
177. ons and owner group are dismissed Second the order in which directory entries are stored always follows the order of file names according to the C locale collation order This makes archive production fully deterministic When exporting the daemon digitally signs the contents of the archive and that digital signature is appended When importing the daemon verifies the signature and rejects the import in case of an invalid signature or if the signing key is not authorized The main options are export Export the specified store files or packages see below Write the resulting archive to the standard output Dependencies are not included in the output unless recursive is passed r recursive When combined with export this instructs guix archive to include de pendencies of the given items in the archive Thus the resulting archive is self contained it contains the closure of the exported store items import Read an archive from the standard input and import the files listed therein into the store Abort if the archive has an invalid digital signature or if it is signed by a public key not among the authorized keys see authorize below missing Read a list of store file names from the standard input one per line and write on the standard output the subset of these files missing from the store generate key parameters Generate a new key pair for the daemons This is a prerequisite before archives can be expor
178. or session types described by the desktop files in run current system profile share xsessions and allows users to choose a session from the log in screen using F1 Packages such as xfce sawfish and Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 104 ratpoison provide desktop files adding them to the system wide set of packages automatically makes them available at the log in screen In addition xsession files are honored When available xsession must be an executable that starts a window manager and or other X clients When allow empty passwords is true allow logins with an empty password When auto login is true log in automatically as default user If theme is f the use the default log in theme otherwise theme must be a gexp denoting the name of a directory containing the theme to use In that case theme name specifies the name of the theme Adefault theme Scheme Variable Adefault theme name Scheme Variable The G Expression denoting the default SLiM theme and its name xorg start command guile configuration file f Scheme Procedure xorg server xorg server Return a derivation that builds a guile script to start the X server from xorg server configuration file is the server configuration file or a derivation that builds it when omitted the result of xorg configuration file is used Usually the X server is started by a login manager xorg configuration file drivers resolutions H Scheme Procedure ex
179. ore x8qshihlhgjx6cwsjyvybnfv2i37z23w dbus 1 6 4 tar gz drv gnu store ilixwpi12f1950d15h2cj11c73733jayOz alsa lib 1 0 27 1 tar bz2 drv gnu store nlmaipw0p603fpfiqy7kn4zm105r5dmw util linux 2 21 drv to something like guix build emacs dry run The following files would be downloaded gnu store pk3n221bq6ydamyymqkkz7i69wiwjiwi emacs 24 3 gnu store 2ygn4ncnhrpr61rssa6z0d9x22si0va3 libjpeg 8d gnu store Tiyz6lgx4dazma9dwn2mc jxaah9w77 jq cairo 1 12 16 gnu store Tzdhgp0Oni5181vfn8mb96sxqfmvqrl7v libxrender 0 9 7 This indicates that substitutes from hydra gnu org are usable and will be downloaded when possible for future builds Guix ignores substitutes that are not signed or that are not signed by one of the keys listed in the ACL It also detects and raises an error when attempting to use a substitute that has been tampered with The substitute mechanism can be disabled globally by running guix daemon with no substitutes see Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 It can also be disabled temporarily by passing the no substitutes option to guix package guix build and other command line tools Today each individual s control over their own computing is at the mercy of institutions corporations and groups with enough power and determination to subvert the computing infrastructure and exploit its weaknesses While using hydra gnu org substitutes can be convenient we encourage users to also build on their own or even run th
180. ormation on how to generate this representation for a particular operating system definition Technically developers can define service types to express these relations There can be any number of services of a given type on the system for instance a system running two instances of the GNU secure shell server Ish has two instances of Ish service type with different parameters The following section describes the programming interface for service types and services 7 2 14 2 Service Types and Services A service type is a node in the DAG described above Let us start with a simple example the service type for the Guix build daemon see Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 119 define guix service type service type name guix extensions list service extension dmd root service type guix dmd service service extension account service type guix accounts service extension activation service type guix activation It defines a two things 1 A name whose sole purpose is to make inspection and debugging easier 2 A list of service extensions where each extension designates the target service type and a procedure that given the service s parameters returns a list of object to extend the service of that type Every service type has at least one service extension The only exception is the boot service type which is the ultimate service In this example guix service type extends t
181. oss compilation it will be en sured that packages for the architecture of the build machine are present such that executables from them can be used during the build This is typically where you would list tools needed at build time but not at run time such as Autoconf Automake pkg config Gettext or Bison guix lint can report likely mistakes in this area see Section 6 7 Invoking guix lint page 70 self native input default f This is a Boolean field telling whether the package should use itself as a native input when cross compiling outputs default out The list of output names of the package See Section 3 4 Packages with Multiple Outputs page 21 for typical uses of additional outputs native search paths default search paths default O A list of search path specification objects describing search path en vironment variables honored by the package replacement default sf This must either f or a package object that will be used as a replacement for this package See Section 7 4 Security Updates page 125 for details synopsis one line description of the package description A more elaborate description of the package license The license of the package a value from guix licenses Chapter 5 Programming Interface 41 home page The URL to the home page of the package as a string supported systems default supported systems The list of systems supported by the pa
182. ot file r file Make file a symlink to the result and register it as a garbage collector root log file Return the build log file names or URLs for the given package or derivations or raise an error if build logs are missing This works regardless of how packages or derivations are specified For instance the following invocations are equivalent Chapter 6 Utilities 63 guix build log file guix build d guile guix build log file guix build guile guix build log file guile guix build log file e gnu packages guile guile 2 0 If a log is unavailable locally and unless no substitutes is passed the command looks for a corresponding log on one of the substitute servers as specified with substitute urls So for instance let s say you want to see the build log of GDB on MIPS but you re actually on an x86 64 machine guix build log file gdb s mips64el linux http hydra gnu org log gdb 7 10 You can freely access a huge library of build logs In addition a number of options that control the build process are common to guix build and other commands that can spawn builds such as guix package or guix archive These are the following load path directory L directory Add directory to the front of the package module search path see Section 7 5 Package Modules page 126 This allows users to define their own packages and make them visible to the command line tools keep failed K
183. our choice of free software license such as the GNU General Public License to permit their use in free software Concept Index Concept Index local host name lookup sssssreserescucs 110 A authorizing archives 9 ug Ve AE eee ewes 26 B bag low level package representation 42 boot loader oslleecee ee mnt 113 bootstrap binaries cece eee eee 131 bootstrapping 0 6 eee eee eee eee 131 build code quoting s ssusrrsrrrrerrrrre 53 build environment ee cece eee eee 8 build hook per eR Re 6 9 build phases iier len m p REID 43 build SySlemiosscebeserbeenbo crei Ge YE Pda 42 build usergiss secl erede e IA D NUS NE 5 C GlEOOU cicer emn ISIN ETE ARE LR NR ES 6 8 ee EE 29 71 common build option 63 eer Ch et 77 80 container build emvironment 8 DATI EE EE 67 GRAN gg ge EE dE ENEE 67 cross compilation lessen 54 cross compilation eee eee eee ee 39 62 customization of packages s srerececs 126 customization of services 87 D GaeCMON sn ce ins cceaes Mae EARS D aes es 5 eet TES Dpico baeonte 72 debugging Dies 124 deduplication 3 csneni ek AE Ress 10 24 derivations xls uIecr ER Ere n Aereo ot derivation path 47 ele EE 47 development epvironments 75 device mapping I 93 DHCP networking service 101 digital signatures c i o e rg v Hep Ra diovan 20 disk encryption eee ee See heres 93
184. outputs is live This allows users to keep track of the origins of items in their store Setting it to no saves a bit of disk space Note that when both gc keep derivations and gc keep outputs are used the effect is to keep all the build prerequisites the sources compiler libraries and other build time tools of live objects in the store regardless of Chapter 2 Installation 11 whether these prerequisites are live This is convenient for developers since it saves rebuilds or downloads impersonate linux 2 6 On Linux based systems impersonate Linux 2 6 This means that the kernel s uname system call will report 2 6 as the release number This might be helpful to build programs that usually wrongfully depend on the kernel version number lose logs Do not keep build logs By default they are kept under localstatedir guix log system system Assume system as the current system type By default it is the architec ture kernel pair found at configure time such as x86 64 1inux listen socket Listen for connections on socket the file name of a Unix domain socket The default socket is localstatedir daemon socket socket This option is only useful in exceptional circumstances such as if you need to run several daemons on the same machine 2 6 Application Setup When using Guix on top of GNU Linux distribution other than GuixSD a so called foreign distro a few additional steps are needed to get everything in
185. owing command line options are supported build users group group Take users from group to run build processes see Section 2 4 Setting Up the Daemon page 5 no substitutes Do not use substitutes for build products That is always build things locally instead of allowing downloads of pre built binaries see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 By default substitutes are used unless the client such as the guix package command is explicitly invoked with no substitutes When the daemon runs with no substitutes clients can still explicitly enable substitution via the set build options remote procedure call see Section 5 3 The Store page 46 substitute urls urls Consider urls the default whitespace separated list of substitute source URLs When this option is omitted http hydra gnu org is used This means that substitutes may be downloaded from urls as long as they are signed by a trusted signature see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 no build hook Do not use the build hook The build hook is a helper program that the daemon can start and to which it submits build requests This mechanism is used to offload builds to other machines see Section 2 4 2 Daemon Offload Setup page 6 cache failures Cache build failures By default only successful builds are cached When this option is used guix gc list failures can be used to query the set of store items marked as failed guix gc clear failu
186. partly automated by the guix refresh command see Section 6 6 Invoking guix refresh page 68 Behind the scenes a derivation corresponding to the package object is first computed by the package derivation procedure That derivation is stored in a drv file under gnu store The build actions it prescribes may then be realized by using the build derivations procedure see Section 5 3 The Store page 46 package derivation store package system Scheme Procedure Return the derivation object of package for system see Section 5 4 Derivations page 47 package must be a valid lt package gt object and system must be a string denoting the target system type e g x86_64 linux for an x86_64 Linux based GNU system store must be a connection to the daemon which operates on the store see Section 5 3 The Store page 46 Similarly it is possible to compute a derivation that cross builds a package for some other system package cross derivation store package target Scheme Procedure system Return the lt derivation gt object of package cross built from system to target target must be a valid GNU triplet denoting the target hardware and operating system such as nips64el linux gnu see Section Configuration Names in GNU Configure and Build System 5 1 1 package Reference This section summarizes all the options available in package declarations see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 package Data T
187. pect to find on a GNU Linux system such as the nobody account Note that the root account is not included here It is a special case and is auto matically added whether or not it is specified 7 2 6 Locales A locale defines cultural conventions for a particular language and region of the world see Section Locales in The GNU C Library Reference Manual Each locale has a name that typically has the form language territory codeset e g fr LU utf8 designates the locale for the French language with cultural conventions from Luxembourg and using the UTF 8 encoding Usually you will want to specify the default locale for the machine using the locale field of the operating system declaration see Section 7 2 2 operating system Reference page 89 That locale must be among the locale definitions that are known to the system and these are specified in the locale definitions slot of operating system The default value includes locale definition for some widely used locales but not for all the available locales in order to save space If the locale specified in the locale field is not among the definitions listed in locale definitions guix system raises an error In that case you should add the locale definition to the locale definitions field For instance to add the North Frisian locale for Germany the value of that field may be cons locale definition name fy DE utf8 source fy DE 4default locale defini
188. ration inherit config use substitutes df extra options gc keep outputs mingetty service type config gt mingetty configuration inherit config motd plain file motd Hi there The effect here is to change the options passed to guix daemon when it is started as well as the message of the day that appears when logging in at the console See Section 7 2 14 3 Service Reference page 120 for more on that The configuration for a typical desktop usage with the X11 display server a desktop environment network management power management and more would look like this This is an operating system configuration template for a desktop setup with X11 use modules gnu gnu system nss use service modules desktop use package modules xfce ratpoison certs operating system host name antelope timezone Europe Paris locale en US UTF 8 Assuming dev sdX is the target hard disk and root is the label of the target root file system bootloader grub configuration device dev sdX file systems cons file system Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 88 device root title Label mount point type ext4 Abase file systems users cons user account name bob comment Alice s brother group users supplementary groups wheel netdev audio video home directory home bob jbase user accounts Add Xfce and Ratpoison
189. re authenticating the downloaded tarball against its signature using gpg and finally computing its hash When the public key used to sign the tarball is missing from the user s keyring an attempt is made to automatically retrieve it from a public key server when it s successful the key is added to the user s keyring otherwise guix refresh reports an error The following options are supported Chapter 6 Utilities 69 update u Update distribution source files package recipes in place This is usually run from a checkout of the Guix source tree see Section 8 2 Running Guix Before It Is Installed page 135 pre inst env guix refresh s non core See Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 for more information on package definitions select subset s subset Select all the packages in subset one of core or non core The core subset refers to all the packages at the core of the distribution i e packages that are used to build everything else This includes GCC libc Binutils Bash etc Usually changing one of these packages in the distribution entails a rebuild of all the others Thus such updates are an inconvenience to users in terms of build time or bandwidth used to achieve the upgrade The non core subset refers to the remaining packages It is typically useful in cases where an update of the core packages would be inconvenient type updater t updater Select only packages handled by updater
190. re foo bash e builder inputs bash builder Chapter 5 Programming Interface 49 env vars HOME homeless gt lt derivation gnu store foo drv gt gnu store foo gt As can be guessed this primitive is cumbersome to use directly A better approach is to write build scripts in Scheme of course The best course of action for that is to write the build code as a G expression and to pass it to gexp gt derivation For more information see Section 5 6 G Expressions page 53 Once upon a time gexp gt derivation did not exist and constructing derivations with build code written in Scheme was achieved with build expression gt derivation doc umented below This procedure is now deprecated in favor of the much nicer gexp gt derivation build expression gt derivation store name exp system Scheme Procedure current system inputs OU outputs out hash f hash algo f recursive f env vars modules OI references graphs 1 allowed references 1 local build 1 substitutable zt guile for build zi Return a derivation that executes Scheme expression exp as a builder for derivation name inputs must be a list of name drv path sub drv tuples when sub drv is omitted out is assumed modules is a list of names of Guile modules from the current search path to be copied in the store compiled and made available in the load path duri
191. rers of store files given as arguments requisites R List the requisites of the store files passed as arguments Requisites include the store files themselves their references and the references of these recursively In other words the returned list is the transitive closure of the store files See Section 6 8 Invoking guix size page 71 for a tool to profile the size of an element s closure See Section 6 9 Invoking guix graph page 72 for a tool to visualize the graph of references Lastly the following options allow you to check the integrity of the store and to control disk usage verify options Verify the integrity of the store By default make sure that all the store items marked as valid in the daemon s database actually exist in gnu store When provided options must a comma separated list containing one or more of contents and repair When passing verify contents the daemon will compute the content hash of each store item and compare it against its hash in the database Hash Chapter 3 Package Management 24 mismatches are reported as data corruptions Because it traverses all the files in the store this command can take a long time especially on systems with a slow disk drive Using verify repair or verify contents repair causes the daemon to try to repair corrupt store items by fetching substitutes for them see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 Because repairing is not atomic and thus po
192. res removes store items from the set of cached failures See Section 3 5 Invoking guix gc page 22 cores n cn Use n CPU cores to build each derivation O means as many as available The default value is 0 but it may be overridden by clients such as the cores option of guix build see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 The effect is to define the NIX BUILD CORES environment variable in the build process which can then use it to exploit internal parallelism for instance by running make j NIX BUILD CORES max jobs n Mn Allow at most n build jobs in parallel The default value is 1 Setting it to O means that no builds will be performed locally instead the daemon will offload builds see Section 2 4 2 Daemon Offload Setup page 6 or simply fail Chapter 2 Installation 10 debug Produce debugging output This is useful to debug daemon start up issues but then it may be overridden by clients for example the verbosity option of guix build see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 chroot directory dir Add dir to the build chroot Doing this may change the result of build processes for instance if they use optional dependencies found in dir when it is available and not otherwise For that reason it is not recommended to do so Instead make sure that each derivation declares all the inputs that it needs disable chroot Disable chroot builds Using this option is not re
193. result from derivation builds can be available as substitutes The hydra gnu org server is a front end to a build farm that builds packages from the GNU distribution continuously for some architectures and makes them available as substitutes This is the default source of substitutes it can be overridden by passing the substitute urls option either to guix daemon see guix daemon substitute urls page 9 or to client tools such as guix package see client substitute urls option page 63 To allow Guix to download substitutes from hydra gnu org you must add its pub lic key to the access control list ACL of archive imports using the guix archive com mand see Section 3 7 Invoking guix archive page 24 Doing so implies that you trust hydra gnu org to not be compromised and to serve genuine substitutes This public key is installed along with Guix in prefix share guix hydra gnu org pub where prefix is the installation prefix of Guix If you installed Guix from source make sure you checked the GPG signature of guix 0 9 0 tar gz which contains this public key file T hen you can run something like this guix archive authorize lt hydra gnu org pub Once this is in place the output of a command like guix build should change from something like guix build emacs dry run The following derivations would be built gnu store yrTbnx8xwcayd6j95r2clmkdliqh688w emacs 24 3 drv Chapter 3 Package Management 21 gnu st
194. reted by gnu build system as a request run configure with the enable silent rules flag e The inputs field specifies inputs to the build process i e build time or run time dependencies of the package Here we define an input called gawk whose value is that of the gawk variable gawk is itself bound to a lt package gt object Note that GCC Coreutils Bash and other essential tools do not need to be specified as inputs here Instead gnu build system takes care of ensuring that they are present see Section 5 2 Build Systems page 42 However any other dependencies need to be specified in the inputs field Any de pendency not specified here will simply be unavailable to the build process possibly leading to a build failure Chapter 5 Programming Interface 39 See Section 5 1 1 package Reference page 39 for a full description of possible fields Once a package definition is in place the package may actually be built using the guix build command line tool see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 You can eas ily jump back to the package definition using the guix edit command see Section 6 2 Invoking guix edit page 64 See Section 7 6 Packaging Guidelines page 127 for more information on how to test package definitions and Section 6 7 Invoking guix lint page 70 for information on how to check a definition for style conformance Eventually updating the package definition to a new upstream version can be
195. riant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections You may include a translation of this License and all the license notices in the Document and any Warranty Disclaimers provided that you also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer the original version will prevail If a section in the Document is Entitled Acknowledgements Dedications or His tory the requirement section 4 to Preserve its Title section 1 will typically require changing the actual title 9 TERMINATION You may not copy modify sublicense or distribute the Document except as expressly provided under this License Any attempt otherwise to copy modify sublicense or distribute it is void and will automatically terminate your rights under this License However if you cease all violation of this License then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated a provisionally unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license and b permanently if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days a
196. rings or gexps representing additional arguments to pass on the kernel s command line e g console ttySO0 bootloader The system bootloader configuration object See Section 7 2 12 GRUB Configuration page 113 initrd default base initrd A two argument monadic procedure that returns an initial RAM disk for the Linux kernel See Section 7 2 11 Initial RAM Disk page 112 firmware default base firmware List of firmware packages loadable by the operating system kernel The default includes firmware needed for Atheros based WiFi devices Linux libre module ath9k host name The host name hosts file A file like object see Section 5 6 G Expressions page 53 for use as etc hosts see Section Host Names in The GNU C Library Reference Manual The default is a file with entries for localhost and host name mapped devices default A list of mapped devices See Section 7 2 4 Mapped Devices page 93 file systems A list of file systems See Section 7 2 3 File Systems page 91 3 Currently only the Linux libre kernel is supported In the future it will be possible to use the GNU Hurd Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 90 swap devices default O A list of strings identifying devices to be used for swap space see Section Memory Concepts in The GNU C Library Reference Manual For example dev sda3 users default base user accounts groups default base groups List of user accou
197. rized see Section 3 7 Invoking guix archive page 24 the daemon may download substitutes from it guix daemon substitute urls http example org 8080 The following options are available port port p port Listen for HTTP requests on port Chapter 6 Utilities 79 listen host Listen on the network interface for host The default is to accept connections from any interface user user u user Change privileges to user as soon as possible i e once the server socket is open and the signing key has been read repl port r port Spawn a Guile REPL server see Section REPL Servers in GNU Guile Refer ence Manual on port 37146 by default This is used primarily for debugging a running guix publish server Enabling guix publish on a GuixSD system is a one liner just add a call to guix publish service in the services field of the operating system declaration see guix publish service page 101 6 12 Invoking guix challenge Do the binaries provided by this server really correspond to the source code it claims to build Is this package s build process deterministic These are the questions the guix challenge command attempts to answer The former is obviously an important question Before using a substitute server see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 you d rather verify that it provides the right binaries and thus challenge it The latter is what enables the former If package builds are deterministic the
198. rn the previous state as a monadic value state push value Monadic Procedure Push value to the current state which is assumed to be a list and return the previous state as a monadic value state pop Monadic Procedure Pop a value from the current state and return it as a monadic value The state is assumed to be a list run with state mval state Scheme Procedure Run monadic value mval starting with state as the initial state Return two values the resulting value and the resulting state The main interface to the store monad provided by the guix store module is as follows Chapter 5 Programming Interface 53 AsStore monad Scheme Variable The store monad an alias for state monad Values in the store monad encapsulate accesses to the store When its effect is needed a value of the store monad must be evaluated by passing it to the run with store procedure see below run with store store mval guile for build system Scheme Procedure current system Run mval a monadic value in the store monad in store an open store connection text file name text references Monadic Procedure Return as a monadic value the absolute file name in the store of the file containing text a string references is a list of store items that the resulting text file refers to it defaults to the empty list interned file file name recursive t Monadic Procedure Return the name of file once interned
199. roll back each time you run guix system reconfigure a new generation of the system is created without modifying or deleting previous generations Old system generations get an entry in the GRUB boot menu allowing you to boot them in case something went wrong with the latest generation Reassuring no The guix system list generations command lists the system generations available on disk Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 89 At the Scheme level the bulk of an operating system declaration is instantiated with the following monadic procedure see Section 5 5 The Store Monad page 50 operating system derivation os Monadic Procedure Return a derivation that builds os an operating system object see Section 5 4 Derivations page 47 The output of the derivation is a single directory that refers to all the packages configuration files and other supporting files needed to instantiate os 7 2 2 operating system Reference This section summarizes all the options available in operating system declarations see Section 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System page 85 operating system Data Type This is the data type representing an operating system configuration By that we mean all the global system configuration not per user configuration see Section 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System page 85 kernel default linux libre The package object of the operating system kernel to use kernel arguments default List of st
200. rvice 06 101 B ulX SOEVICO n 4d boe rie x erp EI 101 host name serviCe ees 98 interned file i so e Fe pe rn 53 lirc serviCe lie s west ER RR 108 local file oi e A e e rep E EIORL RES 5T lower object ic sene bk RE be eed a pend 59 lshsService c0 xke SIR TIS anek PRASE 102 Silet eaa i o m 52 mingetty service iiiessls ases nates 98 mixed text file i 2 f eene 58 RE GE 51 RE EE 51 modify serviCcesS nibni tbus ea eee 87 121 nginx S rvlC6 icis sees bebe eges 108 nscd serviCce ise e ber id epe perd 99 Dtp serviCe vue eti sores maar 101 open connection iercseicee ee nee sod Ss AT operating Sgeten 6 cece cece eee ee 85 operating system derivation 89 package cross derivation 53 Dackage zderivation sess esses 53 package cross derivation 39 Dackage derivation esses 39 package file riiilesesew ku e Rib ase bek neris 53 Gackages manifest 17 plain filen c RUP uec nrbe RES 57 polkit serviCe gege Ee 107 postgresql service e 108 program file ic esee ba d ese reb pne 58 Programming Index R E EE 51 run with State s 2l tiin ti ELETE Eont 52 run with 8tO0rei 24 cdee ad piiga RER ae 53 S scheme file6 i neg PIA MUR CER 58 SCreen Locker zeruice ss 104 E EE 120 Sergice ertension esee 122 service extension cee cee eee 122 Seryic kind e Seen era d ade a d syed ace
201. s The installation image includes Parted see Section Overview in GNU Parted User Manual fdisk Cryptsetup LUKS for disk encryption and e2fsprogs the suite of tools to manipulate ext2 ext3 ext4 file systems 3 Once that is done mount the target root partition under mnt 4 Lastly run deco start cow store mnt This will make gnu store copy on write such that packages added to it during the installation phase will be written to the target disk rather than kept in memory 7 1 4 Proceeding with the Installation With the target partitions ready you now have to edit a file and provide the declaration of the operating system to be installed To that end the installation system comes with two text editors GNU nano see GNU nano Manual and GNU Zile an Emacs clone It is better to store that file on the target root file system say as mnt etc config scm See Section 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System page 85 for examples of operating system configurations These examples are available under etc configuration in the installation image so you can copy them and use them as a starting point for your own configuration Once you are done preparing the configuration file the new system must be initialized remember that the target root file system is mounted under mnt guix system init mnt etc config scm mnt This will copy all the necessary files and install GRUB on dev sdX unless you pass the no grub option For
202. s 20d lists generations that are up to 20 days old Chapter 3 Package Management 20 delete generations pattern d pattern When pattern is omitted delete all generations except the current one This command accepts the same patterns as list generations When pat tern is specified delete the matching generations When pattern specifies a duration generations older than the specified duration match For instance delete generations 1m deletes generations that are more than one month old If the current generation matches it is not deleted Also the zeroth generation is never deleted Note that deleting generations prevents roll back to them Consequently this command must be used with care Finally since guix package may actually start build processes it supports all the com mon build options that guix build supports see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 3 3 Substitutes Guix supports transparent source binary deployment which means that it can either build things locally or download pre built items from a server We call these pre built items substitutes they are substitutes for local build results In many cases downloading a substitute is much faster than building things locally Substitutes can be anything resulting from a derivation build see Section 5 4 Deriva tions page 47 Of course in the common case they are pre built package binaries but source tarballs for instance which also
203. s and perform X11 client side rendering Guix s fontconfig package looks for fonts in HOME guix profile by default Thus to allow graphical applications installed with Guix to display fonts you will have to install fonts with Guix as well Essential font packages include gs fonts font dejavu and font gnu freefont ttf Chapter 3 Package Management 13 3 Package Management The purpose of GNU Guix is to allow users to easily install upgrade and remove software packages without having to know about their build procedure or dependencies Guix also goes beyond this obvious set of features This chapter describes the main features of Guix as well as the package management tools it provides T wo user interfaces are provided for routine package management tasks A command line interface described below see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 as well as a visual user interface in Emacs described in a subsequent chapter see Chapter 4 Emacs Interface page 27 3 1 Features When using Guix each package ends up in the package store in its own directory something that resembles gnu store xxx package 1 2 where xxx is a base32 string note that Guix comes with an Emacs extension to shorten those file names see Section 4 4 Emacs Prettify page 34 Instead of referring to these directories users have their own profile which points to the packages that they actually want to use These profiles are stored within each
204. s avahi daemon a system wide mDNS DNS SD responder that allows for service discovery and zero configuration host name lookups see http avahi org and extends the name service cache daemon nscd so that it can resolve local host names using nss mdns Additionally add the avahi package to the system profile so that commands such as avahi browse are directly usable If host name is different from f use that as the host name to publish for this machine otherwise use the machine s actual host name When publish is true publishing of host names and services is allowed in particular avahi daemon will publish the machine s host name and IP address via mDNS on the local network When wide area is true DNS SD over unicast DNS is enabled Boolean values ipv4 and ipv6 determine whether to use IPv4 IPv6 sockets 7 2 7 3 X Window Support for the X Window graphical display system specifically Xorg is provided by the gnu services xorg module Note that there is no xorg service procedure Instead the X server is started by the login manager currently SLiM slim service allow empty passwords f auto login Scheme Procedure 4 default user startx theme 4default slim theme theme name 4default slim theme name Return a service that spawns the SLiM graphical login manager which in turn starts the X display server with startx a command as returned by xorg start command SLiM automatically looks f
205. s command has the same meaning as guix build S shell command see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 guix devel build package source C c 1 Lint check a package defined by the current variable definition see Section 6 7 Invoking guix lint page 70 guix devel lint package Unluckily there is a limitation related to long running REPL commands When there is a running process in a Geiser REPL you are not supposed to evaluate anything in a scheme buffer because this will freeze the REPL it will stop producing any output however the evaluating process will continue you will just not see any progress anymore Be aware even moving the point in a scheme buffer may break the REPL if Autodoc see Section Autodoc and friends in Geiser User Manual is enabled which is the default So you have to postpone editing your scheme buffers until the running evaluation will be finished in the REPL Alternatively to avoid this limitation you may just run another Geiser REPL and while something is being evaluated in the previous REPL you can continue editing a scheme file with the help of the current one Chapter 5 Programming Interface 37 5 Programming Interface GNU Guix provides several Scheme programming interfaces APIs to define build and query packages The first interface allows users to write high level package definitions These definitions refer to familiar packaging concepts such as the name and v
206. s the same meaning as dry run option see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 4 2 5 2 Buffer Names Default names of guix el buffers Guix may be changed with the following vari ables Chapter 4 Emacs Interface 32 guix package list buffer name guix output list buffer name guix generation list buffer name guix package info buffer name guix output info buffer name guix generation info buffer name guix repl buffer name guix internal repl buffer name By default the name of a profile is also displayed in a list or info buffer name To change this behavior use guix buffer name function variable For example if you want to display all types of results in a single buffer in such case you will probably use a history 1 r extensively you may do it like this let name Guix Universal setq guix package list buffer name name guix output list buffer name name guix generation list buffer name name guix package info buffer name name guix output info buffer name name guix generation info buffer name name guix buffer name function guix buffer name simple 4 2 5 3 Keymaps If you want to change default key bindings use the following keymaps see Section Init Rebinding in The GNU Emacs Manual guix root map Parent keymap with general keys for all guix modes guix list mode map Parent keymap with general keys for list buffers guix package list mode map Keymap with spe
207. sections as invariant To do this add their Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License 144 titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version s license notice These titles must be distinct from any other section titles You may add a section Entitled Endorsements provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties for example statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front Cover Text and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back Cover Text to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version Only one passage of Front Cover Text and one of Back Cover Text may be added by or through arrangements made by any one entity If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of you may not add another but you may replace the old one on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one The author s and publisher s of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version 5 COMBINING DOCUMENTS You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified vers
208. sed thereby preventing them from being garbage collected during its lifetime mixed text file name text Scheme Procedure Return an object representing store file name containing text text is a sequence of strings and file like objects as in mixed text file profile export PATH coreutils bin grep bin This is the declarative counterpart of text file Of course in addition to gexps embedded in host code there are also modules con taining build tools To make it clear that they are meant to be used in the build stratum these modules are kept in the guix build name space Chapter 5 Programming Interface 59 Internally high level objects are lowered using their compiler to either derivations or store items For instance lowering a package yields a derivation and lowering a plain file yields a store item This is achieved using the lower object monadic procedure lower object obj system target 1 Monadic Procedure Return as a value in store monad the derivation or store item corresponding to obj for system cross compiling for target if target is true obj must be an object that has an associated gexp compiler such as a package Chapter 6 Utilities 60 6 Utilities This section describes tools primarily targeted at developers and users who write new pack age definitions They complement the Scheme programming interface of Guix in a conve nient way 6 1 Invoking guix build Th
209. should be stored persistently on disk shared default t Whether the cache should be shared among users max database size default 32 MiB Maximum size in bytes of the database cache Anscd default caches Scheme Variable List of lt nscd cache gt objects used by default by nscd configuration see above It enables persistent and aggressive caching of service and host name lookups The latter provides better host name lookup performance resilience in the face of unreli able name servers and also better privacy often the result of host name lookups is in local cache so external name servers do not even need to be queried syslog service config file 1 Scheme Procedure Return a service that runs syslogd If configuration file name config file is not specified use some reasonable default settings guix configuration Data Type This data type represents the configuration of the Guix build daemon See Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 for more information guix default guix The Guix package to use build group default guixbuild Name of the group for build user accounts build accounts default 10 Number of build user accounts to create authorize key default t Whether to authorize the substitute key for hydra gnu org see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 use substitutes default t Whether to use substitutes Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 101 substitute urls default defau
210. strip Strip debugging symbols from ELF files unless strip binaries is false copying them to the debug output when available see Section 7 3 Installing Debugging Files page 124 The build side module guix build gnu build system defines standard phases as the default list of build phases standard phases is a list of symbol procedure pairs where the procedure implements the actual phase The list of phases used for a particular package can be changed with the phases parameter For instance passing phases alist delete configure standard phases means that all the phases described above will be used except the configure phase In addition this build system ensures that the standard environment for GNU packages is available This includes tools such as GCC libc Coreutils Bash Make Diffutils grep and sed see the guix build system gnu module for a complete 1 Please see the guix build gnu build system modules for more details about the build phases Chapter 5 Programming Interface 44 list We call these the implicit inputs of a package because package definitions don t have to mention them Other lt build system gt objects are defined to support other conventions and tools used by free software packages They inherit most of gnu build system and differ mainly in the set of inputs implicitly added to the build process and in the list of phases executed Some of these build systems are listed belo
211. such as time stamps has no impact on the hash see Section 3 7 Invoking guix archive page 24 Chapter 6 Utilities 66 6 5 Invoking guix import The guix import command is useful for people willing to add a package to the distribution but who d rather do as little work as possible to get there a legitimate demand The command knows of a few repositories from which it can import package meta data The result is a package definition or a template thereof in the format we know see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 The general syntax is guix import importer options importer specifies the source from which to import package meta data and options specifies a package identifier and other options specific to importer Currently the available importers are gnu Import meta data for the given GNU package This provides a template for the latest version of that GNU package including the hash of its source tarball and its canonical synopsis and description Additional information such as the package s dependencies and its license needs to be figured out manually For example the following command returns a package definition for GNU Hello guix import gnu hello Specific command line options are key download policy As for guix refresh specify the policy to handle missing OpenPGP keys when verifying the package s signature See Section 6 6 Invoking guix refresh page 68 pypi Import meta data
212. suites only cabal environment alist e alist alist is a Scheme alist defining the environment in which the Cabal conditionals are evaluated The accepted keys are os arch impl and a string representing the name of a flag The value associated with a flag has to be either the symbol true or false The value associated with other keys has to conform to the Cabal file format definition The default value associated with the keys os arch and impl is linux x86 64 and ghc respectively This relies on the nix instantiate command of Nix Chapter 6 Utilities 68 The command below imports meta data for the latest version of the HTTP Haskell package without including test dependencies and specifying the value of the flag network uri as false guix import hackage t e network uri false HTTP A specific package version may optionally be specified by following the package name by a hyphen and a version number as in the following example guix import hackage mt1 2 1 3 1 elpa Import meta data from an Emacs Lisp Package Archive ELPA package repos itory see Section Packages in The GNU Emacs Manual Specific command line options are archive repo a repo repo identifies the archive repository from which to retrieve the information Currently the supported repositories and their iden tifiers are GNU selected by the gnu identifier This is the default MELPA Stable selected by the melpa
213. supported system databases aliases ethers group gshadow hosts initgroups netgroup networks password public key rpc Services shadow The system databases handled by the NSS Each of these fields must be a list of lt name service gt objects see below name service Data Type This is the data type representing an actual name service and the associated lookup action name A string denoting the name service see Section Services in the NSS configuration in The GNU C Library Reference Manual Note that name services listed here must be visible to nscd This is achieved by passing the name services argument to nscd service the list of packages providing the needed name services see Section 7 2 7 1 Base Services page 98 reaction An action specified using the lookup specification macro see Section Actions in the NSS configuration in The GNU C Library Reference Manual For example lookup specification unavailable gt continue success gt return Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 112 7 2 11 Initial RAM Disk For bootstrapping purposes the Linux Libre kernel is passed an initial RAM disk or initrd An initrd contains a temporary root file system as well as an initialization script The latter is responsible for mounting the real root file system and for loading any kernel modules that may be needed to achieve that The initrd field of an operating system declaration allows you to specify which i
214. t name synopsis and description of the packages will be searched This can be changed by modi fying guix search params variable By default these commands display each output on a separate line If you prefer to see a list of packages i e a list with a package per line use the following setting Chapter 4 Emacs Interface 29 setq guix package list type package Commands for displaying generations M x guix generations List all the generations M x guix last generations List the N last generations You will be prompted for the number of generations M x guix generations by time List generations matching time period You will be prompted for the pe riod using Org mode time prompt based on Emacs calendar see Section The date time prompt in The Org Manual You can also invoke the guix pull command see Section 3 6 Invoking guix pull page 24 from Emacs using M x guix pull With C u make it verbose Once guix pull has succeeded the Guix REPL is restared This allows you to keep using the Emacs interface with the updated Guix 4 2 2 General information The following keys are available for both list and info types of buffers 1 Go backward forward by the history of the displayed results this history is similar to the history of the Emacs help mode or Info mode E Revert current buffer update information about the displayed pack ages generations and redisplay it R Redisplay current bu
215. t does not specify a version number of this License you may choose any version ever published not as a draft by the Free Software Foundation If the Document specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of this License can be used that proxy s public statement of acceptance of a version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document RELICENSING Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site or MMC Site means any World Wide Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides prominent facilities for anybody to edit those works A public wiki that anybody can edit is an example of such a server A Massive Multiauthor Collaboration or MMC contained in the site means any set of copyrightable works thus published on the MMC site CC BY SA means the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3 0 license pub lished by Creative Commons Corporation a not for profit corporation with a principal place of business in San Francisco California as well as future copyleft versions of that license published by that same organization Incorporate means to publish or republish a Document in whole or in part as part of another Document An MMC is eligible for relicensing if it is licensed under this License and if all works that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC and subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC 1 had no cover texts
216. tainer Note As of version 0 9 0 this tool is experimental The interface is subject to radical change in the future The purpose of guix container is to manipulate processes running within an isolated environment commonly known as a container typically created by the guix environment Chapter 6 Utilities 81 see Section 6 10 Invoking guix environment page 75 and guix system container see Section 7 2 13 Invoking guix system page 114 commands The general syntax is guix container action options action specifies the operation to perform with a container and options specifies the context specific arguments for the action The following actions are available exec Execute a command within the context of a running container The syntax is guix container exec pid program arguments pid specifies the process ID of the running container program specifies an executable file name within the container s root file system arguments are the additional options that will be passed to program The following command launches an interactive login shell inside a GuixSD container started by guix system container and whose process ID is 9001 guix container exec 9001 run current system profile bin bash login Note that the pid cannot be the parent process of a container It must be the container s PID 1 or one of its child processes Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 82 7 GNU Distribution Guix comes with a distribu
217. ted with export Note that this operation usually takes time because it needs to gather enough entropy to generate the key pair The generated key pair is typically stored under etc guix in signing key pub public key and signing key sec private key which must be kept secret When parameters is omitted an ECDSA key using the Ed25519 curve is generated or for Libgcrypt versions before 1 6 0 it is a 4096 bit RSA key Alternately parameters can specify genkey parameters suitable for Libgcrypt see Section General public key related Functions in The Libgcrypt Reference Manual Chapter 3 Package Management 26 authorize Authorize imports signed by the public key passed on standard input The public key must be in s expression advanced format i e the same format as the signing key pub file The list of authorized keys is kept in the human editable file etc guix acl The file contains advanced format s expressions and is structured as an access control list in the Simple Public Key Infrastructure SPKI extract directory x directory Read a single item archive as served by substitute servers see Section 3 3 Sub stitutes page 20 and extract it to directory This is a low level operation needed in only very narrow use cases see below For example the following command extracts the substitute for Emacs served by hydra gnu org to tmp emacs wget 0 http hydra gnu org nar emacs 24 5 N bun
218. tentially dangerous it is available only to the system administrator optimize Optimize the store by hard linking identical files this is deduplication The daemon performs deduplication after each successful build or archive im port unless it was started with disable deduplication see Section 2 5 Invoking guix daemon page 8 Thus this option is primarily useful when the daemon was running with disable deduplication 3 6 Invoking guix pull Packages are installed or upgraded to the latest version available in the distribution currently available on your local machine To update that distribution along with the Guix tools you must run guix pull the command downloads the latest Guix source code and package descriptions and deploys it On completion guix package will use packages and package versions from this just retrieved copy of Guix Not only that but all the Guix commands and Scheme modules will also be taken from that latest version New guix sub commands added by the update also become available The guix pull command is usually invoked with no arguments but it supports the following options verbose Produce verbose output writing build logs to the standard error output url url Download the source tarball of Guix from url By default the tarball is taken from its canonical address at gnu org for the stable branch of Guix bootstrap Use the bootstrap Guile to build the latest Guix This option
219. ters and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject Thus if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters or of legal commercial philosophical ethical or political position regarding them The Invariant Sections are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated as being those of Invariant Sections in the notice that says that the Document is released Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License 141 under this License If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not allowed to be designated as Invariant The Document may contain zero Invariant Sections If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none The Cover Texts are certain short passages of text that are listed as Front Cover Texts or Back Cover Texts in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License A Front Cover Text may be at most 5 words and a Back Cover Text may be at most 25 words A ransparent copy of the Document means a machine readable copy represented in format whose specification is available to the general public that is suitable for revising the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or for images com posed of pixels generic paint programs or for drawings some wid
220. that allows us to choose Sessions using either of these at the log in screen packages cons xfce ratpoison desktop environments nss certs for HTTPS access Abase packages Use the desktop services which include the X11 log in service networking with Wicd and more services Adesktop services Allow resolution of local host names with mDNS name service switch 4mdns host lookup nss See Section 7 2 7 4 Desktop Services page 104 for the exact list of services provided by desktop services See Section 7 2 9 X 509 Certificates page 109 for background information about the nss certs package that is used here See Section 7 2 2 operating system Reference page 89 for details about all the available operating system fields Assuming the above snippet is stored in the my system config scm file the guix system reconfigure my system config scm command instantiates that configuration and makes it the default GRUB boot entry see Section 7 2 13 Invoking guix system page 114 The normal way to change the system s configuration is by updating this file and re running guix system reconfigure One should never have to touch files in etc or to run commands that modify the system state such as useradd or grub install In fact you must avoid that since that would not only void your warranty but also prevent you from rolling back to previous versions of your system should you ever need to Speaking of
221. that only local clients can connect whereas 0 0 0 0 means that connections can come from any networking interface In addition extra settings specifies a string to append to the configuration file Furthermore Cgnu services ssh provides the following service lsh service host key etc Ish host key daemonic Scheme Procedure t interfaces port number 22 allow empty passwords f root login 1 syslog output t x11 forwarding zt tcp ip forwarding t password authentication t public key authentication t initialize t Run the 1shd program from Ish to listen on port port number host key must desig nate a file containing the host key and readable only by root When daemonic is true 1shd will detach from the controlling terminal and log its output to syslogd unless one sets syslog output to false Obviously it also makes Ish service depend on existence of syslogd service When pid file is true 1shd writes its PID to the file called pid file When initialize is true automatically create the seed and host key upon service activation if they do not exist yet This may take long and require interaction When initialize is false it is up to the user to initialize the randomness generator see Section Ish make seed in LSH Manual and to create a key pair with the private key stored in file host key see Section Ishd basics in LSH Manual When interfaces is empty lshd l
222. the box However most other programs that can talk H T TPS wget git w3m etc need to be told where CA certificates can be found In GuixSD this is done by adding a package that provides certificates to the packages field of the operating system declaration see Section 7 2 2 operating system Reference page 89 GuixSD includes one such package nss certs which is a set of CA certificates provided as part of Mozilla s Network Security Services Note that it is not part of base packages so you need to explicitly add it The etc ssl certs directory which is where most applications and libraries look for cer tificates by default points to the certificates installed globally Unprivileged users can also install their own certificate package in their profile A number of environment variables need to be defined so that applications and libraries know where to find them Namely the OpenSSL library honors the SSL CERT DIR and SSL CERT FILE variables Some applications add their own environment variables for instance the Git version control system honors the certificate bundle pointed to by the GIT_SSL_CAINFO environment variable Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 110 7 2 10 Name Service Switch The gnu system nss module provides bindings to the configuration file of libe s name service switch or NSS see Section NSS Configuration File in The GNU C Library Ref erence Manual In a nutshell the NSS is a mechanism that allows
223. the build environment in the corresponding file in a simple text format When allowed references is true it must be a list of store items or outputs that the derivation s output may refer to When leaked env vars is true it must be a list of strings denoting environment vari ables that are allowed to leak from the daemon s environment to the build envi ronment This is only applicable to fixed output derivations i e when hash is true The main use is to allow variables such as http_proxy to be passed to derivations that download files When local build is true declare that the derivation is not a good candidate for offloading and should rather be built locally see Section 2 4 2 Daemon Offload Setup page 6 This is the case for small derivations where the costs of data transfers would outweigh the benefits When substitutable is false declare that substitutes of the derivation s output should not be used see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 This is useful for instance when building packages that capture details of the host CPU instruction set Here s an example with a shell script as its builder assuming store is an open connection to the daemon and bash points to a Bash executable in the store use modules guix utils guix store guix derivations let builder add the Bash script to the store add text to store store my builder sh echo hello world gt out n derivation sto
224. tion of the GNU system consisting entirely of free software The distribution can be installed on its own see Section 7 1 System Installation page 82 but it is also possible to install Guix as a package manager on top of an installed GNU Linux system see Chapter 2 Installation page 3 To distinguish between the two we refer to the standalone distribution as the Guix System Distribution or GuixSD The distribution provides core GNU packages such as GNU libc GCC and Binutils as well as many GNU and non GNU applications The complete list of available packages can be browsed on line or by running guix package see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 guix package list available Our goal has been to provide a practical 10096 free software distribution of Linux based and other variants of GNU with a focus on the promotion and tight integration of GNU components and an emphasis on programs and tools that help users exert that freedom Packages are currently available on the following platforms x86 64 linux Intel AMD x86 64 architecture Linux Libre kernel 1686 linux Intel 32 bit architecture A32 Linux Libre kernel armhf linux ARMv7 A architecture with hard float Thumb 2 and NEON using the EABI hard float ABI and Linux Libre kernel mips64el linux little endian 64 bit MIPS processors specifically the Loongson series n32 ap plication binary interface ABI and Linux Libre kernel GuixSD itself is
225. tions Likewise to save space one might want locale definitions to list only the locales that are actually used as in list locale definition name ja JP eucjp source ja JP charset EUC JP The compiled locale definitions are available at run current system locale X Y where X Y is the libc version which is the default location where the GNU libc provided by Guix looks for locale data This can be overridden using the LOCPATH environment variable see locales and locpath page 11 The 1ocale definition form is provided by the gnu system locale module Details are given below locale definition Data Type This is the data type of a locale definition name The name of the locale See Section Locale Names in The GNU C Library Reference Manual for more information on locale names source The name of the source for that locale This is typically the language_ territory part of the locale name Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 97 charset default UTF 8 The character set or code set for that locale as defined by IANA Adefault locale definitions Scheme Variable An arbitrary list of commonly used UTF 8 locales used as the default value of the locale definitions field of operating system declarations These locale definitions use the normalized codeset for the part that follows the dot in the name see Section Using gettextized software in The GNU C Library Reference Manual So for instance
226. tive Identify inputs that should most likely be native inputs Source home page source file name Probe home page and source URLs and report those that are invalid Check that the source file name is meaningful e g is not just a version number or git checkout and should not have a file name declared see Section 5 1 2 origin Reference page 41 Chapter 6 Utilities 71 formatting Warn about obvious source code formatting issues trailing white space use of tabulations etc The general syntax is guix lint options package If no package is given on the command line then all packages are checked The options may be zero or more of the following checkers c Only enable the checkers specified in a comma separated list using the names returned by list checkers list checkers 1 List and describe all the available checkers that will be run on packages and exit 6 8 Invoking guix size The guix size command helps package developers profile the disk usage of packages It is easy to overlook the impact of an additional dependency added to a package or the impact of using a single output for a package that could easily be split see Section 3 4 Packages with Multiple Outputs page 21 These are the typical issues that guix size can highlight The command can be passed a package specification such as gcc 4 8 or guile debug or a file name in the store Consider this example guix size coreutils store it
227. to the package name We use ttf for TrueType fonts otf for OpenType fonts and type1 for PostScript Type 1 fonts Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 131 7 7 Bootstrapping Bootstrapping in our context refers to how the distribution gets built from nothing Re member that the build environment of a derivation contains nothing but its declared inputs see Chapter 1 Introduction page 2 So there s an obvious chicken and egg problem how does the first package get built How does the first compiler get compiled Note that this is a question of interest only to the curious hacker not to the regular user so you can shamelessly skip this section if you consider yourself a regular user The GNU system is primarily made of C code with libc at its core The GNU build system itself assumes the availability of a Bourne shell and command line tools provided by GNU Coreutils Awk Findutils sed and grep Furthermore build programs programs that run configure make etc are written in Guile Scheme see Section 5 4 Deriva tions page 47 Consequently to be able to build anything at all from scratch Guix relies on pre built binaries of Guile GCC Binutils libc and the other packages mentioned above the bootstrap binaries These bootstrap binaries are taken for granted though we can also re create them if needed more on that later Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 132 Preparing to Use the Bootstrap Binaries
228. tra config Return a configuration file for the Xorg server containing search paths for all the common drivers drivers must be either the empty list in which case Xorg chooses a graphics driver automatically or a list of driver names that will be tried in this order e g modesetting vesa Likewise when resolutions is the empty list Xorg chooses an appropriate screen resolution otherwise it must be a list of resolutions e g 1024 768 640 480 Last extra config is a list of strings or objects appended to the text file argument list It is used to pass extra text to be added verbatim to the configuration file screen locker service package name Scheme Procedure Add package a package for a screen locker or screen saver whose command is program to the set of setuid programs and add a PAM entry for it For example screen locker service xlockmore xlock makes the good ol XlockMore usable 7 2 7 4 Desktop Services The gnu services desktop module provides services that are usually useful in the con text of a desktop setup that is on a machine running a graphical display server possibly with graphical user interfaces etc To simplify things the module defines a variable containing the set of services that users typically expect on a machine with a graphical environment and networking Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 105 Adesktop services Scheme Variable This is a list of services t
229. trap dependencies 3 difutls 3 3 Chapter 6 Utilities yields this bigger graph At the bottom of the graph see Section 5 2 Now note that the dependencies of those implicit inputs that is the bootstrap dependencies see Section 7 7 Bootstrapping page 131 are not shown here for conciseness Similar to bag emerged bag This is the most detailed representation It shows the DAG of derivations see Section 5 4 Derivations page 47 and plain store items derivations the above representation many additional nodes are visible including builds scripts patches Guile modules etc All the above types correspond to build time dependencies The following graph type represents the run time dependencies Chapter 6 Utilities 75 references This is the graph of references of a package output as returned by guix gc references see Section 3 5 Invoking guix gc page 22 If the given package output is not available in the store guix graph attempts to obtain dependency information from substitutes The available options are the following type type t type Produce a graph output of type where type must be one of the values listed above list types List the supported graph types expression expr e expr Consider the package expr evaluates to This is useful to precisely refer to a package as in this example guix graph e gnu packages commencement gnu mak
230. ts dependencies are added to those of the containing gexp If obj is another kind of object it is inserted as is 0bj output ungexp obj output This is like the form above but referring explicitly to the output of obj this is useful when obj produces multiple outputs see Section 3 4 Pack ages with Multiple Outputs page 21 obj obj output ungexp native obj ungexp native obj output Same as ungexp but produces a reference to the native build of obj when used in a cross compilation context output output ungexp output output Insert a reference to derivation output output or to the main output when output is omitted This only makes sense for gexps passed to gexp gt derivation Chapter 5 Programming Interface 56 1st ungexp splicing 1st Like the above but splices the contents of Ist inside the containing list lst ungexp native splicing 1st Like the above but refers to native builds of the objects listed in Ist G expressions created by gexp or are run time objects of the gexp type see below gexp obj Scheme Procedure Return t if obj is a G expression G expressions are meant to be written to disk either as code building some derivation or as plain files in the store The monadic procedures below allow you to do that see Section 5 5 The Store Monad page 50 for more information about monads gexp gt derivation name exp system current system Mona
231. ts packages that will be globally visible on the system for all user accounts i e in every user s PATH environment variable in addition to the per user profiles see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 The base packages variable Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 87 provides all the tools one would expect for basic user and administrator tasks including the GNU Core Utilities the GNU Networking Utilities the GNU Zile lightweight text editor find grep etc The example above adds tcpdump to those taken from the gnu packages admin module see Section 7 5 Package Modules page 126 The services field lists system services to be made available when the system starts see Section 7 2 7 Services page 97 The operating system declaration above specifies that in addition to the basic services we want the lshd secure shell daemon listening on port 2222 see Section 7 2 7 2 Networking Services page 101 Under the hood 1sh service arranges so that 1shd is started with the right command line options possibly with supporting configuration files generated as needed see Section 7 2 14 Defining Services page 117 Occasionally instead of using the base services as is you will want to customize them For instance to change the configuration of guix daemon and Mingetty the console log in you may write the following instead of base services modify services base services guix service type config gt guix configu
232. udo terminal file system and immutable store see below Operating system declara tions should always contain at least these Note that while it is tempting to use dev disk by uuid and similar device names to achieve the same result this is not recommended These special device nodes are created by the udev daemon and may be unavailable at the time the device is mounted Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 93 Apseudo terminal file system Scheme Variable This is the file system to be mounted as dev pts It supports pseudo terminals created via openpty and similar functions see Section Pseudo Terminals in The GNU C Library Reference Manual Pseudo terminals are used by terminal emulators such as xterm Ashared memory file system Scheme Variable This file system is mounted as dev shm and is used to support memory sharing across processes see Section Memory mapped I O in The GNU C Library Refer ence Manual Aimmutable store Scheme Variable This file system performs a read only bind mount of gnu store making it read only for all the users including root This prevents against accidental modification by software running as root or by system administrators The daemon itself is still able to write to the store it remounts it read write in its own name space Abinary format file system Scheme Variable The binfmt misc file system which allows handling of arbitrary executable file types to be delegat
233. uix profile lib debug From there on GDB will pick up debugging information from the debug files under guix profile lib debug In addition you will most likely want GDB to be able to show the source code being debugged To do that you will have to unpack the source code of the package of interest obtained with guix build source see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 and to point GDB to that source directory using the directory command see Section Source Path in Debugging with GDB The debug output mechanism in Guix is implemented by the gnu build system see Section 5 2 Build Systems page 42 Currently it is opt in debugging information is available only for those packages whose definition explicitly declares a debug output This may be changed to opt out in the future if our build farm servers can handle the load To check whether a package has a debug output use guix package list available see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 7 4 Security Updates Note As of version 0 9 0 the feature described in this section is experimental Occasionally important security vulnerabilities are discovered in core software pack ages and must be patched Guix follows a functional package management discipline see Chapter 1 Introduction page 2 which implies that when a package is changed every package that depends on it must be rebuilt This can significantly slow down the deployment of fixes in core
234. ules guix gnu packages gdb gnu packages autotools gnu packages texinfo Augment the package definition of GDB with the build tools needed when developing GDB and which are not needed when simply installing it package inherit gdb native inputs autoconf autoconf 2 64 automake automake texinfo texinfo G package native inputs gdb Include all specified packages in the resulting environment as if an ad hoc package were defined with them as inputs This option is useful for quickly creating an environment without having to write a package expression to contain the desired inputs For instance the command guix environment ad hoc guile guile sdl guile runs guile in an environment where Guile and Guile SDL are available Note that this example implicitly asks for the default output of guile and guile sdl but it is possible to ask for a specific output e g glib bin asks for the bin output of glib see Section 3 4 Packages with Multiple Outputs page 21 This option may be composed with the default behavior of guix environment Packages appearing before ad hoc are interpreted as packages whose depen dencies will be added to the environment the default behavior Packages ap pearing after are interpreted as packages that will be added to the environment directly Unset existing environment variables when building the new environment This has the effect of creating an environment in whi
235. unreleased gems from Git or a traditional source release tarball Which Ruby package is used can be specified with the ruby parameter A list of additional flags to be passed to the gem command can be specified with the gem flags parameter waf build system Scheme Variable This variable is exported by guix build system waf It implements a build proce dure around the waf script The common phases configure build and install are implemented by passing their names as arguments to the waf script The waf script is executed by the Python interpreter Which Python package is used to run the script can be specified with the python parameter Chapter 5 Programming Interface 46 haskell build system Scheme Variable This variable is exported by guix build system haskell It implements the Cabal build procedure used by Haskell packages which involves running runhaskell Setup hs configure prefix gnu store and runhaskell Setup hs build Instead of installing the package by running runhaskell Setup hs install to avoid trying to register libraries in the read only compiler store directory the build system uses runhaskell Setup hs copy followed by runhaskell Setup hs register In addition the build system generates the package documentation by running runhaskell Setup hs haddock unless haddock f is passed Optional Haddock parameters can be passed with the help of the haddock flags parameter If the file Setup hs is
236. up the right development environment for their package without having to manually install the package s dependencies in their profile see Section 6 10 Invoking guix environment page 75 3 2 Invoking guix package The guix package command is the tool that allows users to install upgrade and remove packages as well as rolling back to previous configurations It operates only on the user s own profile and works with normal user privileges see Section 3 1 Features page 13 Its syntax is guix package options Primarily options specifies the operations to be performed during the transaction Upon completion a new profile is created but previous generations of the profile remain available should the user want to roll back For example to remove lua and install guile and guile cairo in a single transaction guix package r lua i guile guile cairo guix package also supports a declarative approach whereby the user specifies the ex act set of packages to be available and passes it via the manifest option see profile manifest page 16 For each user a symlink to the user s default profile is automatically created in HOME guix profile This symlink always points to the current generation of the user s default profile Thus users can add HOME guix profile bin to their PATH environment variable and so on If you are not using the Guix System Distribution consider adding the following lines to your bash profile s
237. user root guix profile bin guix 7 To use substitutes from hydra gnu org see Section 3 3 Substitutes page 20 autho rize them guix archive authorize lt root guix profile share guix hydra gnu org pub And that s it For additional tips and tricks see Section 2 6 Application Setup page 11 The guix package must remain available in root s profile or it would become subject to garbage collection in which case you would find yourself badly handicapped by the lack of the guix command The tarball in question can be re produced and verified simply by running the following command in the Guix source tree make guix binary system tar xz 2 2 Requirements This section lists requirements when building Guix from source The build procedure for Guix is the same as for other GNU software and is not covered here Please see the files README and INSTALL in the Guix source tree for additional details GNU Guix depends on the following packages e GNU Guile version 2 0 7 or later e GNU libgcrypt e GNU Make The following dependencies are optional e Instaling Guile JSON will allow you to use the guix import pypi command see Section 6 5 Invoking guix import page 66 It is of interest primarily for develop ers and not for casual users e Installing GnuTLS Guile will allow you to access https URLs with the guix download command see Section 6 3 Invoking guix download page 65 the guix import pypi command and the gu
238. user s home directory at HOME guix profile For example alice installs GCC 4 7 2 As a result home alice guix profile bin gcc points to gnu store gcc 4 7 2 bin gcc Now on the same machine bob had already installed GCC 4 8 0 The profile of bob simply continues to point to gnu store gcc 4 8 0 bin gcc i e both versions of GCC coexist on the same system without any interference The guix package command is the central tool to manage packages see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 It operates on those per user profiles and can be used with normal user privileges The command provides the obvious install remove and upgrade operations Each invo cation is actually a transaction either the specified operation succeeds or nothing happens Thus if the guix package process is terminated during the transaction or if a power out age occurs during the transaction then the user s profile remains in its previous state and remains usable In addition any package transaction may be rolled back So if for example an upgrade installs a new version of a package that turns out to have a serious bug users may roll back to the previous instance of their profile which was known to work well Similarly the global system configuration is subject to transactional upgrades and roll back see Section 7 2 1 Using the Configuration System page 85 All those packages in the package store may be garbage collected Gu
239. v configuration gt udev initial rules udev configuration udev udev the udev package to use rules append initial rules rules This is the service type for the eudev device management daemon Compared to the previous example in addition to an extension of dmd root service type we see two new fields compose This is the procedure to compose the list of extensions to services of this type Services can extend the udev service by passing it lists of rules we compose those extensions simply by concatenating them extend This procedure defines how the service s value is extended with the composition of the extensions Udev extensions are composed into a list of rules but the udev service value is itself a lt udev configuration gt record So here we extend that record by appending the list of rules is contains to the list of contributed rules There can be only one instance of an extensible service type such as udev service type If there were more the service extension specifications would be ambiguous Still here The next section provides a reference of the programming interface for ser vices 7 2 14 3 Service Reference We have seen an overview of service types see Section 7 2 14 2 Service Types and Services page 118 This section provides a reference on how to manipulate services and service types This interface is provided by the gnu services module service type value Scheme Procedure Return a ne
240. ver TLS are supported provided the Guile bindings for GnuTLS are available in the user s environment when they are not available an error is raised See Section Guile Preparations in GnuTLS Guile for more information The following option is available format fmt f fmt Write the hash in the format specified by fmt For more information on the valid values for fmt see Section 6 4 Invoking guix hash page 65 6 4 Invoking guix hash The guix hash command computes the SHA256 hash of a file It is primarily a convenience tool for anyone contributing to the distribution it computes the cryptographic hash of a file which can be used in the definition of a package see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 The general syntax is guix hash option file guix hash has the following option format fmt f fmt Write the hash in the format specified by fmt Supported formats nix base32 base32 base16 hex and hexadecimal can be used as well If the format option is not specified guix hash will output the hash in nix base32 This representation is used in the definitions of packages recursive r Compute the hash on file recursively In this case the hash is computed on an archive containing file including its children if it is a directory Some of file s meta data is part of the archive for instance when file is a regular file the hash is different depending on whether file is executable or not Meta data
241. vices mozilla com v1 submit key geoclue submission nick geoclue applications standard geoclue applications Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 108 Return a service that runs the GeoClue location service This service provides a D Bus interface to allow applications to request access to a user s physical location and optionally to add information to online location databases See the GeoClue web site for more information 7 2 7 5 Database Services The gnu services databases module provides the following service postgresql service Z postgresql postgresql config file Scheme Procedure data directory var lib postgresgl data Return a service that runs postgresql the PostgreSQL database server The PostgreSQL daemon loads its runtime configuration from config file and stores the database cluster in data directory 7 2 7 6 Web Services The gnu services web module provides the following service nginx service nginx nginx log directory Scheme Procedure var log nginx run directory var run nginx config file Return a service that runs nginx the nginx web server The nginx daemon loads its runtime configuration from config file Log files are written to log directory and temporary runtime data files are written to run directory For proper operation these arguments should match what is in config file to ensure that the directories are created when the service is activated 7 2 7 7 Various Serv
242. w cmake build system Scheme Variable This variable is exported by guix build system cmake It implements the build procedure for packages using the CMake build tool It automatically adds the cmake package to the set of inputs Which package is used can be specified with the cnake parameter The configure flags parameter is taken as a list of flags passed to the cmake command The build type parameter specifies in abstract terms the flags passed to the compiler it defaults to RelWithDebInfo short for release mode with de bugging information which roughly means that code is compiled with 02 g as is the case for Autoconf based packages by default glib or gtk build system Scheme Variable This variable is exported by guix build system glib or gtk It is intended for use with packages making use of GLib or GTK This build system adds the following two phases to the ones defined by gnu build system glib or gtk wrap The phase glib or gtk wrap ensures that programs found under bin are able to find GLib s schemas and GTK modules This is achieved by wrapping the programs in launch scripts that appropriately set the DG DATA DIRS and GTK PATH environment variables It is possible to exclude specific package outputs from that wrapping process by listing their names in the glib or gtk wrap excluded outputs parameter This is useful when an output is known not to con tain any GLib or GTK binaries and w
243. w service of type a lt service type gt object see below value can be any object it represents the parameters of this particular service instance service obj Scheme Procedure Return true if obj is a service service kind service Scheme Procedure Return the type of service i e a lt service type gt object service parameters service Scheme Procedure Return the value associated with service It represents its parameters Here is an example of how a service is created and manipulated define s service nginx service type nginx configuration nginx nginx Chapter 7 GNU Distribution 121 log directory log directory run directory run directory file config file service s dt eq service kind s nginx service type gt dt The modify services form provides a handy way to change the parameters of some of the services of a list such as base services see Section 7 2 7 1 Base Services page 98 Of course you could always use standard list combinators such as map and fold to do that see Section SRFI 1 in GNU Guile Reference Manual modify services simply provides a more concise form for this common pattern modify services services type variable gt body Scheme Syntax Modify the services listed in services according to the given clauses Each clause has the form type variable gt body where type is a service type such as guix service type and variable is an identifier
244. wpaf7plaswqqjwigppsg5fyh99vdlb9kz17c91ng89ndq1i build system gnu build system synopsis Hello GNU world An example GNU package description Guess what GNU Hello prints Chapter 6 Utilities 61 home page http www gnu org software hello license gp13 expression expr e expr source S sources Build the package or derivation expr evaluates to For example expr may be gnu packages guile guile 1 8 which un ambiguously designates this specific variant of version 1 8 of Guile Alternately expr may be a G expression in which case it is used as a build pro gram passed to gexp gt derivation see Section 5 6 G Expressions page 53 Lastly expr may refer to a zero argument monadic procedure see Section 5 5 The Store Monad page 50 The procedure must return a derivation as a monadic value which is then passed through run with store Build the packages source derivations rather than the packages themselves For instance guix build S gcc returns something like gnu store gcc 4 7 2 tar bz2 which is GCC s source tarball The returned source tarball is the result of applying any patches and code snippets specified in the package s origin see Section 5 1 Defining Packages page 37 Fetch and return the source of package or derivation and all their dependencies recursively T his is a handy way to obtain a local copy of all the source code needed to build packages allowi
245. ype This is the data type representing a package recipe name The name of the package as a string version The version of the package as a string source An origin object telling how the source code for the package should be acquired see Section 5 1 2 origin Reference page 41 build system The build system that should be used to build the package see Section 5 2 Build Systems page 42 Chapter 5 Programming Interface 40 arguments default The arguments that should be passed to the build system This is a list typically containing sequential keyword value pairs inputs default O Package or derivation inputs to the build This is a list of lists where each list has the name of the input a string as its first element a package or derivation object as its second element and optionally the name of the output of the package or derivation that should be used which defaults to out propagated inputs default O This field is like inputs but the specified packages will be force installed alongside the package they belong to see package cmd propagated inputs page 15 for information on how guix package deals with propagated inputs For example this is necessary when a library needs headers of another library to compile or needs another shared library to be linked alongside itself when a program wants to link to it native inputs default O This field is like inputs but in case of a cr
246. zip2 guix archive x tmp emacs Single item archives are different from multiple item archives produced by guix archive export they contain a single store item and they do not embed a signature T hus this operation does no signature verification and its output should be considered unsafe The primary purpose of this operation is to facilitate inspection of archive contents coming from possibly untrusted substitute servers To export store files as an archive to the standard output run guix archive export options specifications specifications may be either store file names or package specifications as for guix package see Section 3 2 Invoking guix package page 14 For instance the following command creates an archive containing the gui output of the git package and the main output of emacs guix archive export git gui gnu store emacs 24 3 gt great nar If the specified packages are not built yet guix archive automatically builds them The build process may be controlled with the same options that can be passed to the guix build command see Section 6 1 Invoking guix build page 60 Chapter 4 Emacs Interface 27 4 Emacs Interface GNU Guix comes with several useful modules known as guix el for GNU Emacs which are intended to make an Emacs user interaction with Guix convenient and fun 4 1 Initial Setup On the Guix System Distribution see Chapter 7 GNU Distribution page 82 guix el is

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