Re: Help with .deb, .rpm and guix packaging.

[Julien Lepiller <julien@lepiller.eu>]

Le 29 octobre 2020 12:34:58 GMT-04:00, Aniket Patil <aniket112.patil@gmail.com> a écrit :
>Hi,
>There are GNU/Linux distros which are Debian-based or fedora(Redhat)
>based
>etc. What I know to my knowledge is GNU packages are .tar packages with
>.deb and .rpm file format, am I right? What I am wondering about how
>guix
>makes it happen? I mean are we bypassing the process of making the
>package
>in .deb and .rpm format and releasing it, or what exactly are we doing?
>To
>my knowledge, we are building from source code as we can see in the
>recipe.
>So that means we are bypassing the process of making packages
>explicitly
>for the distro, aren't we?

Archives of packages are useful for *sharing* an already-built package. If you look at Gentoo for instance, the package manager builds everything from source, so it doesn't need to handle an archive format.

Guix is the same, but has two facets. First, building jocally means you don't need an archive format such as deb or rpm, because you download the sources, build locally, and install directly. If you allow substitutes, guix will download them from a build farm. In that case, the download requires some sort of archive, and we use the nar archive format (same as nix).

In theory, we could use the .deb or .rpm format to share our packages, but they have their own specificities that don't align well with guix assumptions.

The role of Guix is to be a separate package manager. We do not produce .deb or .rpm, but store paths, which are another way of managing packages. When installed on top of a foreign distro, you could say we bypass the system's package manager entirely. This allows us to be independent from the distro and run in any environment, whether it's rpm-based, deb-based, or something else.

>Where can I learn more about this? I am going through guix manual but I
>don't know which chapter to look for. Also, where can I learn more
>about
>packaging software on GNU/Linux distribution? Like .deb or .rpm

Since each distribution uses its own process, you need to look at their respective documentation.

For Guix, the manual is the reference, though it might be confusing because it is quite detailled. If your goal is to understand the internals and how guix installs software, I recommend reading these sections:

http://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/The-Store.html

http://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Derivations.html

http://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Substitutes.html#Substitutes

>
>Regards,
>Aniket.