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Diffstat (limited to 'doc')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/guix.texi | 57 |
1 files changed, 53 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/doc/guix.texi b/doc/guix.texi index 21f6d87b3a..2ca1496bac 100644 --- a/doc/guix.texi +++ b/doc/guix.texi @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ Documentation License''. @copying This manual documents GNU Guix version @value{VERSION}. -Copyright (C) 2012 Ludovic Courtès +Copyright (C) 2012, 2013 Ludovic Courtès Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or @@ -133,6 +133,7 @@ management tools it provides. @menu * Features:: How Guix will make your life brighter. * Invoking guix-package:: Package installation, removal, etc. +* Invoking guix-gc:: Running the garbage collector. @end menu @node Features @@ -172,9 +173,10 @@ of their profile, which was known to work well. All those packages in the package store may be @emph{garbage-collected}. Guix can determine which packages are still referenced by the user -profiles, and remove those that are provably no longer referenced. -Users may also explicitly remove old generations of their profile so -that the packages they refer to can be collected. +profiles, and remove those that are provably no longer referenced +(@pxref{Invoking guix-gc}). Users may also explicitly remove old +generations of their profile so that the packages they refer to can be +collected. Finally, Guix takes a @dfn{purely functional} approach to package management, as described in the introduction (@pxref{Introduction}). @@ -275,6 +277,53 @@ its version string, and the source location of its definition. @end table +@node Invoking guix-gc +@section Invoking @command{guix-gc} + +@cindex garbage collector +Packages that are installed but not used may be @dfn{garbage-collected}. +The @command{guix-gc} command allows users to explicitly run the garbage +collector to reclaim space from the @file{/nix/store} directory. + +The garbage collector has a set of known @dfn{roots}: any file under +@file{/nix/store} reachable from a root is considered @dfn{live} and +cannot be deleted; any other file is considered @dfn{dead} and may be +deleted. The set of garbage collector roots includes default user +profiles, and may be augmented with @command{guix-build --root}, for +example (@pxref{Invoking guix-build}). + +The @command{guix-gc} command has three mode of operations: it can be +used to garbage-collect any dead files (the default), to delete specific +files (the @code{--delete} option), or to print garbage-collector +information. The available options are listed below: + +@table @code +@item --collect-garbage[=@var{min}] +@itemx -C [@var{min}] +Collect garbage---i.e., unreachable @file{/nix/store} files and +sub-directories. This is the default operation when no option is +specified. + +When @var{min} is given, stop once @var{min} bytes have been collected. +@var{min} may be a number of bytes, or it may include a unit as a +suffix, such as @code{MiB} for mebibytes and @code{GB} for gigabytes. + +When @var{min} is omitted, collect all the garbage. + +@item --delete +@itemx -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. + +@item --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. + +@item --list-live +Show the list of live store files and directories. +@end table + @c ********************************************************************* @node Programming Interface |