Guix: new universal package manager

Alejandro (a.k.a KZKG^Gaara)

2 minutes

 Plaster is a system of package management functional (in the sense that it already "works" and uses functions to define dependencies, updates, and so on) that promises many advantages over traditional package managers. 


First of all, it should be mentioned that Guix is ​​a universal package manager and that it can work for any distro, regardless of whether you already have your own package manager installed.

Second, it is transactional and allows roll-backs, that is, on the one hand, if something goes wrong in the middle of a critical installation or update, the system returns to its previous state and does not "break" and, on the other, if you want to go back to a previous state (that is, if you want to go back to an earlier version of a program or undo the last changes in an update), the system "remembers" the previous state and can automatically undo all changes.

Third, it allows the installation of packages by non-privileged users and the installation of several versions of the same application in parallel, regardless of whether these versions have different dependencies. This is possible because Guix installs packages in its own watertight repositories within the system.

Finally, for packagers there are also advantages, mainly because it eliminates possible failures as a consequence of the packager "forgetting" a dependency that is already installed on your machine.

For the curious, it should be noted that Guix is ​​an evolution of the Nix package system.

Precisely, Nix (consequently, also Guix) generates the packages from the source code, so an installation command like:

nix-env - install firefox

… It will cause a lot of compilation activity, not only for Firefox, but also for all its dependencies, at least if these packages are not already pre-compiled in the Nix store. For most users, compiling (Gentoo style) is not very pleasant, as it takes too long. However, Nix can skip this step and download a pre-compiled binary if it exists from the Nix store.

In the following video you can see one of its creators explaining how Guix works:

Guix is ​​endorsed by the Free Software Foundation, it already has about 8000 packages in its repositories. You can find its source code on the FSF Git:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git

To get the source code, you can run the following:

git clone git: //git.savannah.gnu.org/guix.git

Source: Plaster & Taringa


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  1.   goxtobe said
    ago 11 years

    This type of package manager seems like an excellent idea, I'll try it and see how it works.

    Reply to goxtobe
  2.   Victor said
    ago 11 years

    does someone here use it? I was looking and there is not much information or anyone who puts a tutorial on the main commands and how to use it, in fact this is one of the few posts there are….

    Reply to victor