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Guix and its package collection are updated by running guix pull
(see Invoking guix pull). By default guix pull
downloads and
deploys Guix itself from the official GNU Guix repository. This can be
customized by defining channels in the
~/.config/guix/channels.scm file. A channel specifies a URL and branch
of a Git repository to be deployed, and guix pull
can be instructed
to pull from one or more channels. In other words, channels can be used to
customize and to extend Guix, as we will see below.
The channel called guix
specifies where Guix itself—its command-line
tools as well as its package collection—should be downloaded. For instance,
suppose you want to update from your own copy of the Guix repository at
example.org
, and specifically the super-hacks
branch, you can
write in ~/.config/guix/channels.scm
this specification:
;; Tell 'guix pull' to use my own repo. (list (channel (name 'guix) (url "https://example.org/my-guix.git") (branch "super-hacks")))
From there on, guix pull
will fetch code from the super-hacks
branch of the repository at example.org
.
You can also specify additional channels to pull from. Let’s say you have a bunch of custom package variants or personal packages that you think would make little sense to contribute to the Guix project, but would like to have these packages transparently available to you at the command line. You would first write modules containing those package definitions (see Package Modules), maintain them in a Git repository, and then you and anyone else can use it as an additional channel to get packages from. Neat, no?
Warning: Before you, dear user, shout—“woow this is soooo coool!”—and publish your personal channel to the world, we would like to share a few words of caution:
- Before publishing a channel, please consider contributing your package definitions to Guix proper (see Contributing). Guix as a project is open to free software of all sorts, and packages in Guix proper are readily available to all Guix users and benefit from the project’s quality assurance process.
- When you maintain package definitions outside Guix, we, Guix developers, consider that the compatibility burden is on you. Remember that package modules and package definitions are just Scheme code that uses various programming interfaces (APIs). We want to remain free to change these APIs to keep improving Guix, possibly in ways that break your channel. We never change APIs gratuitously, but we will not commit to freezing APIs either.
- Corollary: if you’re using an external channel and that channel breaks, please report the issue to the channel authors, not to the Guix project.
You’ve been warned! Having said this, we believe external channels are a practical way to exert your freedom to augment Guix’ package collection and to share your improvements, which are basic tenets of free software. Please email us at guix-devel@gnu.org if you’d like to discuss this.
Once you have a Git repository containing your own package modules, you can
write ~/.config/guix/channels.scm
to instruct guix pull
to
pull from your personal channel in addition to the default Guix
channel(s):
;; Add my personal packages to those Guix provides. (cons (channel (name 'my-personal-packages) (url "https://example.org/personal-packages.git")) %default-channels)
Note that the snippet above is (as always!) Scheme code; we use cons
to
add a channel the list of channels that the variable %default-channels
is bound to (see cons
and lists in GNU Guile Reference
Manual). With this file in place, guix pull
builds not only Guix
but also the package modules from your own repository. The result in
~/.config/guix/current is the union of Guix with your own package
modules:
$ guix pull --list-generations … Generation 19 Aug 27 2018 16:20:48 guix d894ab8 repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git branch: master commit: d894ab8e9bfabcefa6c49d9ba2e834dd5a73a300 my-personal-packages dd3df5e repository URL: https://example.org/personal-packages.git branch: master commit: dd3df5e2c8818760a8fc0bd699e55d3b69fef2bb 11 new packages: my-gimp, my-emacs-with-cool-features, … 4 packages upgraded: emacs-racket-mode@0.0.2-2.1b78827, …
The output of guix pull
above shows that Generation 19 includes
both Guix and packages from the my-personal-packages
channel. Among
the new and upgraded packages that are listed, some like my-gimp
and
my-emacs-with-cool-features
might come from
my-personal-packages
, while others come from the Guix default channel.
The guix pull --list-generations
output above shows precisely which
commits were used to build this instance of Guix. We can thus replicate it,
say, on another machine, by providing a channel specification in
~/.config/guix/channels.scm that is “pinned” to these commits:
;; Deploy specific commits of my channels of interest. (list (channel (name 'guix) (url "https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git") (commit "d894ab8e9bfabcefa6c49d9ba2e834dd5a73a300")) (channel (name 'my-personal-packages) (url "https://example.org/personal-packages.git") (branch "dd3df5e2c8818760a8fc0bd699e55d3b69fef2bb")))
The guix describe --format=channels
command can even generate this
list of channels directly (see Invoking guix describe).
At this point the two machines run the exact same Guix, with access to
the exact same packages. The output of guix build gimp
on
one machine will be exactly the same, bit for bit, as the output of the same
command on the other machine. It also means both machines have access to all
the source code of Guix and, transitively, to all the source code of every
package it defines.
This gives you super powers, allowing you to track the provenance of binary artifacts with very fine grain, and to reproduce software environments at will—some sort of “meta reproducibility” capabilities, if you will. See Inferiors, for another way to take advantage of these super powers.
Next: Inferiors, Previous: Invoking guix pull, Up: Package Management [Contents][Index]