Minimal guix build

Minimal guix build

[Kai Jellinghaus]

Hello, Guix looks awesome. Trying to understand the source & where packages
are coming from right now/.
What in the main (if that's the right term for
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git) repo is necessary to build & run
guix, and what is simply the "guix proper" channel?

I'm trying to make my own channel & substitution server for x86_64 & armv8.
Would love to individually scan what packages I really need and only keep
those around, but can't quite figure out the repo.

Thanks for any help understanding this already!

Re: Minimal guix build

[Leo Famulari]

On Sun, Jul 21, 2024 at 09:27:11PM +0200, Kai Jellinghaus wrote:
> Hello, Guix looks awesome. Trying to understand the source & where packages
> are coming from right now/.
> What in the main (if that's the right term for
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git) repo is necessary to build & run
> guix, and what is simply the "guix proper" channel?

Guix is fully contained in the guix.git repo.

The main channel is the 'master' branch of that repo.

Guix is a single codebase and cannot be separated into multiple parts,
except with a large and novel effort on your part.

Re: Minimal guix build

[Marek Paśnikowski]

Kai Jellinghaus <contact@kaij.tech> writes:

> I'm trying to make my own channel & substitution server for x86_64 & armv8.
> Would love to individually scan what packages I really need and only keep
> those around, but can't quite figure out the repo.
>

First, remember that "less is more".  What you want to do is excessive
and counter-productive to the goal of learning Guix.  My suggestion is to
limit the initial ambition to just replicating the Guix repository in
your network.  You may find out it is more complicated than it seems.

After deploying your first channel it is likely that you might be
interested in composing multiple channels with dependencies.  I have
observed that only the guix channel is special in a sense that its
modules are accessible from any configuration code without any
preparation.  Any other modules almost certainly must be declared as
channel dependencies, like [this][1]:

(channel
 (version 0)
 (dependencies
  (channel
   (introduction
    (channel-introduction
     (version 0)
     (commit "897c1a470da759236cc11798f4e0a5f7d4d59fbc")
     (signer <<CENSORED>>)))
   (name <<CENSORED>>)
   (url <<CENSORED>>))
  (channel
   (introduction
    (channel-introduction
     (version 0)
     (commit "7d17bded11ef1239592e6e5abd40ceee1e99cbb8")
     (signer <<CENSORED>>)))
   (name <<CENSORED>>)
   (url <<CENSORED>>))))

[1]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Declaring-Channel-Dependencies.html