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