I have a relatively recent guix version (ran guix pull yesterday) and I can't build emacs, as libarchive, one of its dependencies, fails to build. Here is a snippet of the error message:

"

Reference files will be read from: /tmp/nix-build-libarchive-3.1.2.drv-0/libarchive-3.1.2/tar/test
Running tests on: "/tmp/nix-build-libarchive-3.1.2.drv-0/libarchive-3.1.2/./bsdtar"
Exercising: bsdtar 3.1.2 - libarchive 3.1.2

  0: test_0                                            ok
  1: test_basic                                        ok
  2: test_copy                                         ok
  3: test_empty_mtree                                  ok
  4: test_extract_tar_bz2                              ok
  5: test_extract_tar_grz                              ok
  6: test_extract_tar_gz                               ok
  7: test_extract_tar_lrz                              ok
  8: test_extract_tar_lz                               ok
  9: test_extract_tar_lzma                             ok
 10: test_extract_tar_lzo                              ok
 11: test_extract_tar_xz                               ok
 12: test_extract_tar_Z                                ok
 13: test_format_newc                                  ok
 14: test_help                                         ok
 15: test_option_a                                     ok
 16: test_option_b64encode                             ok
 17: test_option_b                                     FAIL
 18: test_option_C_upper                               ok
 19: test_option_exclude                               ok
 20: test_option_gid_gname                             ok
 21: test_option_grzip                                 ok
 22: test_option_H_upper                               ok
 23: test_option_j                                     ok
 24: test_option_k                                     ok
 25: test_option_keep_newer_files                      ok
 26: test_option_lrzip                                 ok
 27: test_option_L_upper                               ok
 28: test_option_lzma                                  ok
 29: test_option_lzop                                  ok
 30: test_option_n                                     ok
 31: test_option_newer_than                            ok
 32: test_option_nodump                                ok
 33: test_option_older_than                            ok
 34: test_option_O_upper                               ok
 35: test_option_q                                     ok
 36: test_option_r                                     ok
 37: test_option_s                                     ok
 38: test_option_T_upper                               ok
 39: test_option_uid_uname                             ok
 40: test_option_uuencode                              ok
 41: test_option_U_upper                               ok
 42: test_option_X_upper                               ok
 43: test_option_xz                                    ok
 44: test_option_z                                     ok
 45: test_patterns                                     ok
 46: test_print_longpath                               ok
 47: test_stdio                                        ok
 48: test_strip_components                             ok
 49: test_symlink_dir                                  ok
 50: test_version                                      ok
 51: test_windows                                      ok

Totals:
  Tests run:               52
  Tests failed:             1
  Assertions checked:    7715
  Assertions failed:        2
  Skips reported:           6

Failing tests:
  17: test_option_b (2 failures)

Details for failing tests: /tmp/nix-build-libarchive-3.1.2.drv-0/bsdtar_test.2015-11-13T09.52.46-000

phase `check' failed after 77.9 seconds
builder for `/gnu/store/671ccl9qibwzzaizq3g9rjdinisqspiz-libarchive-3.1.2.drv' failed with exit code 1
cannot build derivation `/gnu/store/laphmpnyxy3aiwn6s2s2hmk6a2kb110l-cmake-3.3.2.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation `/gnu/store/aw9721lq55hzgy3ld8hw0jvxq04pc7mn-graphite2-1.3.3.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation `/gnu/store/p2yxxb0xn8yrmrnbh3y1v6crlx8bxxjc-openjpeg-1.5.2.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation `/gnu/store/rsbdafy8zjb8iyx035cd35x28pd295lk-emacs-24.5.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation `/gnu/store/w6ifcj7iq7g23rx8xy55325kxavpp65y-gtk+-3.18.2.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
cannot build derivation `/gnu/store/sbamsn3qcwc6ny09ix51swagczd6wmrl-profile.drv': 1 dependencies couldn't be built
guix package: error: build failed: build of `/gnu/store/sbamsn3qcwc6ny09ix51swagczd6wmrl-profile.drv' failed
"

Let me know if I can provide more details. I'm running guix on Fedora 23.