Updating Packages

Updating Packages

[Raghav Gururajan]

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Hello Guix!

It seems like, when I do "guix package -u", only packages installed by user are upgraded. It also seems like, when I do "guix system reconfigure", only system installed packages are upgraded. I noticed the latter when "slim" got replaced by "gdm" and name "GuixSD" got replaced by "Guix" in multiple places in GNOME, GRUB etc; when I did the system reconfiguration.

How to update packages in both system-profile and user-profile, at the same time?

Thank you!

Regards,
RG.

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Re: Updating Packages

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

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Raghav,

Raghav Gururajan wrote:
> It seems like, when I do "guix package -u", only packages 
> installed by user are upgraded. It also seems like, when I do 
> "guix system reconfigure", only system installed packages are 
> upgraded.

Yes, that's how it works.

I gather (’…seems…’) that you didn't find this clearly explained 
in the documentation?  Could you suggest an improvement?

> How to update packages in both system-profile and user-profile, 
> at the same time?

I don't know whether it's possible to (easily) apply both updates 
within the same transaction from the command line.

Unless you really need to: guix pull && guix system reconfigure … 
&& guix package -u ….

Kind regards,

T G-R

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Re: Updating Packages

[Pierre Neidhardt]

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Maybe not what you are asking but what about

    guix system reconfigure ... && guix package -u

?

-- 
Pierre Neidhardt
https://ambrevar.xyz/

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Re: Updating Packages

[Raghav Gururajan]

Hmm. Okay.

Thank you.

April 15, 2019 3:22 PM, "Pierre Neidhardt" <mail@ambrevar.xyz> wrote:

> Maybe not what you are asking but what about
> 
> guix system reconfigure ... && guix package -u
> 
> ?
> 
> -- 
> Pierre Neidhardt
> https://ambrevar.xyz

Re: Updating Packages

[Chris Marusich]

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Hi Raghav,

"Raghav Gururajan" <rvgn@disroot.org> writes:

> Hmm. Okay.
>
> Thank you.
>
> April 15, 2019 3:22 PM, "Pierre Neidhardt" <mail@ambrevar.xyz> wrote:
>
>> Maybe not what you are asking but what about
>> 
>> guix system reconfigure ... && guix package -u
>> 
>> ?

First, just a reminder: on this email list, please avoid top-posting.
Most people bottom-post or reply in-line.  It's fine to cut out text
that is not relevant to your response.

Now, as to your question: Pierre has given the answer.  There is not
currently a way to upgrade the system and the user profiles in a single
transaction.  This might make one ask, "Why is that?"  I want to offer
an explanation why.

Guix System follows the functional software deployment model and is
designed to put the users (even unprivileged users) in control of their
own software, as well as their own Guix installation.  It is designed so
that a system administrator can upgrade the system software and services
without interfering with what the users have installed.  Likewise, users
can upgrade their own software without interfering with the system's
underlying software.

This is a good feature.  It separates concerns and gives more control to
users and administrators both.  Remember, an administrator has full
access to the system, so they can still forcibly upgrade user profiles
if they choose to do so.  In a traditional GNU/Linux distribution, you
generally need special privileges (e.g., sudo or root access) in order
to use the system's package manager to install/remove any software.  On
such systems, the package manager does not provide any way for any users
(privileged or not) to manage "their own" software; all software is
effectively "system" software, and it must be managed by a privileged
user.  On these systems, upgrading the system software upgrades software
for all users.  Guix provides more fine-grained control than this.

At first blush, it might seem like it isn't good that we can't upgrade
all the software in a single transaction, but from the perspective of
ensuring correct deployment of software, it actually isn't a problem.
If Bob upgrades his profile, it won't interfere with software that Alice
has installed, and it won't interfere with any system software, either.
Likewise, if the system is upgraded, it won't interfere with any
software that Alice or Bob have installed, since their profiles are
"self-contained" thanks to the functional model.

From a security perspective, it may be undesirable to allow old profiles
containing software with security vulnerabilities to exist, but that can
be fixed by upgrading the stale profiles.  The task of enforcing that
every profile is "up to date" is arguably outside the scope of Guix;
Guix just provides the mechanisms to make it possible for you to upgrade
all that software in a safe fashion.

I hope that helps explain why it makes sense that the task of "upgrading
a user's profile" and "upgrading the system's software" are independent
of each other in Guix System.

-- 
Chris

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Re: Updating Packages

[Raghav Gururajan]

I had an idea/suggestion. How about adding "guix system -u" feature to guix? So the difference between "guix system reconfigure" and "guix system -u" would be; the former does the reconfiguration cum upgrade process whereas the latter does just the upgrade process to system packages in the existing configuration.

April 15, 2019 2:48 PM, "Tobias Geerinckx-Rice" <me@tobias.gr> wrote:

> Raghav,
> 
> Raghav Gururajan wrote:
> 
>> It seems like, when I do "guix package -u", only packages
>> installed by user are upgraded. It also seems like, when I do
>> "guix system reconfigure", only system installed packages are
>> upgraded.
> 
> Yes, that's how it works.
> 
> I gather (’…seems…’) that you didn't find this clearly explained
> in the documentation? Could you suggest an improvement?
> 
>> How to update packages in both system-profile and user-profile,
>> at the same time?
> 
> I don't know whether it's possible to (easily) apply both updates
> within the same transaction from the command line.
> 
> Unless you really need to: guix pull && guix system reconfigure …
> && guix package -u ….
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> T G-R

Re: Updating Packages

[Joshua Branson]

"Raghav Gururajan" <rvgn@disroot.org> writes:

> I had an idea/suggestion. How about adding "guix system -u" feature to
> guix? So the difference between "guix system reconfigure" and "guix
> system -u" would be; the former does the reconfiguration cum upgrade
> process whereas the latter does just the upgrade process to system
> packages in the existing configuration.

You might be able to create an alias for this in your .bashrc...but I'm
not certain.

>
> April 15, 2019 2:48 PM, "Tobias Geerinckx-Rice" <me@tobias.gr> wrote:
>
>> Raghav,
>> 
>> Raghav Gururajan wrote:
>> 
>>> It seems like, when I do "guix package -u", only packages
>>> installed by user are upgraded. It also seems like, when I do
>>> "guix system reconfigure", only system installed packages are
>>> upgraded.
>> 
>> Yes, that's how it works.
>> 
>> I gather (’…seems…’) that you didn't find this clearly explained
>> in the documentation? Could you suggest an improvement?
>> 
>>> How to update packages in both system-profile and user-profile,
>>> at the same time?
>> 
>> I don't know whether it's possible to (easily) apply both updates
>> within the same transaction from the command line.
>> 
>> Unless you really need to: guix pull && guix system reconfigure …
>> && guix package -u ….
>> 
>> Kind regards,
>> 
>> T G-R
>

-- 
Joshua Branson
Sent from Emacs and Gnus

Re: Updating Packages

[Tobias Geerinckx-Rice]

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Raghav Gururajan wrote:
> I had an idea/suggestion. How about adding "guix system -u" 
> feature to guix? So the difference between "guix system 
> reconfigure" and "guix system -u" would be; the former does the 
> reconfiguration cum upgrade process whereas the latter does just 
> the upgrade process to system packages in the existing 
> configuration.

But this arbitrary distinction doesn't make sense.

The system configuration file is a configuration file.  Like any 
other configuration file on your system, if you edit it and then 
invoke a new ’guix system’, Guix will use the current version of 
that configuration, not silently fall back to an out-of-date copy. 
That's how config files work.

Unless you're sendmail, and nobody wants to be sendmail.

Kind regards,

T G-R

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