On Mon, 5 Nov 2018 09:33:22 -0700
Brian Woodcox <bw@inskydata.com> wrote:

> All of a sudden the system is downloading and compiling a pile of
> packages that were already installed as root.
> 
> Is there a way to have guix use the packages that were installed in
> the root account instead of downloading and rebuilding gcc, etc?

Hi Brian,

store item will be reused. But only if they are really the same.

I guess that users root and noobie have two different states of "guix
pull": For example noobie did the pull two days later and there was
some commit to gcc or one of its dependencies. Then it is no longer the
"same" gcc (even if the version number is the same) and will be
redownloaded/rebuilt.

To cope with that, first pull for the first user, say root. Then use
"guix --version" or better "guix describe" to see the commit on which
you are on.

Then with the second user, use "guix pull
--commit=<commit-from-above>". Then both users are "in sync" and if you
install the same packages it is just a matter of updating the user's
profile.

Björn