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| -rw-r--r-- | README | 64 |
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diff --git a/README b/README index 3c201e88bb..6a32cb32cc 100644 --- a/README +++ b/README @@ -1,19 +1,24 @@ -*- mode: org -*- -GNU Guix is Nix[0] from Guile[1]! +[[http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/][GNU Guix]] is a purely functional package manager, and associated free +software distribution, for the [[http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu.html][GNU system]]. In addition to standard +package management features, Guix supports transactional upgrades and +roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and +garbage collection. -Concretely, it allows Nix package management to be done entirely in -Scheme. The goal is to investigate whether Scheme, and in particular -the ability to define EDSLs, would allow it to fulfill the role of the -Nix language. +It provides [[http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/][Guile]] Scheme APIs, including a high-level embedded +domain-specific languages (EDSLs) to describe how packages are to be +built and composed. -[0] http://nixos.org/nix/ -[1] http://gnu.org/software/guile/ +A user-land free software distribution for GNU/Linux comes as part of +Guix. + +Guix is based on the [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]] package manager. * Hacking -Guix currently depends on the following packages: +GNU Guix currently depends on the following packages: - [[http://gnu.org/software/guile/][GNU Guile 2.0.x]] - [[http://nixos.org/nix/][Nix]] @@ -52,10 +57,45 @@ the (guix store) module. * Contact -The repository is at <https://gitorious.org/guix/>. - -Please email <ludo@gnu.org> or <nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl>, or -join #guile or #nixos on irc.freenode.net or `civodul'. +GNU Guix is hosted at https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix/. + +Please email <bug-guix@gnu.org> for bug reports or questions regarding +Guix and its distribution; email <gnu-system-discuss@gnu.org> for +general issues regarding the GNU system. + +Join #guix on irc.freenode.net. + +* Guix & Nix + +GNU Guix is based on [[http://nixos.org/nix/][the Nix package manager]]. It implements the same +package deployment paradigm, and in fact it reuses some of its code. +Yet, different engineering decisions were made for Guix, as described +below. + +Nix is really two things: a package build tool, implemented by a library +and daemon, and a special-purpose programming language. GNU Guix relies +on the former, but uses Scheme as a replacement for the latter. + +Using Scheme instead of a specific language allows us to get all the +features and tooling that come with Guile (compiler, debugger, REPL, +Unicode, libraries, etc.) And it means that we have a general-purpose +language, on top of which we can have embedded domain-specific languages +(EDSLs), such as the one used to define packages. This broadens what +can be done in package recipes themselves, and what can be done around them. + +Technically, Guix makes remote procedure calls to the ‘nix-worker’ +daemon to perform operations on the store. At the lowest level, Nix +“derivations” represent promises of a build, stored in ‘.drv’ files in +the store. Guix produces such derivations, which are then interpreted +by the daemon to perform the build. Thus, Guix derivations can use +derivations produced by Nix (and vice versa). + +With Nix and the [[http://nixos.org/nixpkgs][Nixpkgs]] distribution, package composition happens at +the Nix language level, but builders are usually written in Bash. +Conversely, Guix encourages the use of Scheme for both package +composition and builders. Likewise, the core functionality of Nix is +written in C++ and Perl; Guix relies on some of the original C++ code, +but exposes all the API as Scheme. * Related software |