On Sun, Nov 04, 2018 at 04:09:16PM +0100, Marco van Hulten wrote:
> I removed a package, but this resulted in other packages being built:

[...]

> It takes a long time.  Why does this happen?

When you manage your installed packages with Guix, for example with
`guix package --remove`, you create a new Guix profile [0].

Building profiles requires some software, for example to build the
manpage database.

If you have updated Guix (`guix pull`) since your last profile was
created, the collection of software required to build profiles may have
been updated. So, now you need that software in order to make the new
profile.

It's a bit counterintuitive that removing a package may require
something new, but it's expected behaviour for Guix.

I hope that helps!

[0]
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-package.html#index-profile