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9.2 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
    (name "hello")
    (version "2.10")
    (source (origin
              (method url-fetch)
              (uri (string-append "mirror://gnu/hello/hello-" version
                                  ".tar.gz"))
              (sha256
               (base32
                "0ssi1wpaf7plaswqqjwigppsg5fyh99vdlb9kzl7c9lng89ndq1i"))))
    (build-system gnu-build-system)
    (arguments '(#:configure-flags '("--enable-silent-rules")))
    (inputs (list gawk))
    (synopsis "Hello, GNU world: An example GNU package")
    (description "Guess what GNU Hello prints!")
    (home-page "https://www.gnu.org/software/hello/")
    (license gpl3+)))

Without being a Scheme expert, the reader may have guessed the meaning of the various fields here. This expression binds the variable hello to a <package> object, which is essentially a record (see Scheme records 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—surprise!—"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 Invoking guix import).

In the example above, hello is defined in 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 Package Modules).

There are a few points worth noting in the above package definition:

See package Reference, for a full description of possible fields.

Going further: Intimidated by the Scheme language or curious about it? The Cookbook has a short section to get started that recaps some of the things shown above and explains the fundamentals. See A Scheme Crash Course in GNU Guix Cookbook, for more information.

Once a package definition is in place, the package may actually be built using the guix build command-line tool (see Invoking guix build), troubleshooting any build failures you encounter (see Debugging Build Failures). You can easily jump back to the package definition using the guix edit command (see Invoking guix edit). See Packaging Guidelines, for more information on how to test package definitions, and Invoking guix lint, for information on how to check a definition for style conformance. Lastly, see Channels, for information on how to extend the distribution by adding your own package definitions in a “channel”.

Finally, updating the package definition to a new upstream version can be partly automated by the guix refresh command (see Invoking guix refresh).

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 The Store).

Scheme Procedure: package-derivation store package [system]

Return the <derivation> object of package for system (see Derivations).

package must be a valid <package> 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 The Store).

Similarly, it is possible to compute a derivation that cross-builds a package for some other system:

Scheme Procedure: package-cross-derivation store package target [system]

Return the <derivation> 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 "aarch64-linux-gnu" (see Specifying Target Triplets in Autoconf).

Once you have package definitions, you can easily define variants of those packages. See Defining Package Variants, for more on that.


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