Hi,
The key concept to understand is that Guix runs a build daemon and
package database (/gnu/store) on the machine which multiple 'normal'
users can use. You can see it with:
sudo systemctl status guix-daemon.service
The manual is trying to explain that you use the root user to update
the guix daemon itself. So you do this:
sudo -i pull guix
sudo systemctl restart guix-daemon.service
The second step is that for each of your normal users, you then use
guix. For example, to update guix for my main user and to install a
package:
# open a normal terminal
$ guix pull
$ guix upgrade
$ guix install tmux
If you inspect the guix-daemon service the log will show your user
connecting to the service and the guix-daemon handling the actions
(e.g. download the software):
sudo systemctl status guix-daemon.service
If you had multiple users then each individual user would do guix
pull to update their definitions of what applications/versions are
available. Each user has their own record (called a profile) of which
applications they've installed.
The advantage of using the single daemon, is that if multiple users
installed a program (e.g. tmux) then it would only be downloaded once.
Unless you use your root user regularly you don't need to install
applications as the root user. I personally only run a small number
of commands as root so I don't install any Guix software as root.
Hope that makes it easier to understand!
On 29/10/2022 21:57, Gottfried wrote:
Hi Guixers,
I am very thankful for all the Guixers who worked and are working
for Guix, also for the manual...
because against all hope I was able to install the Guix package
manager on another laptop on top of Trisquel on the basis of the
manual.
I am wondering myself that I was able to understand the manual and
step by step I did what it said.
Even sometimes there were messages of failures but at the end
everything worked. (I had to look up for solutions on the web
several times, but at the end it was successful)
1. As far as I understand it I have to do
guix pull
and a
guix package -u
but no
sudo guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm
because there is no /etc/config.scm file
Is that right?
Where is the relevant file for the guix package manager I installed?
2. Do I regularly have to do a "sudo guix pull" for root?
or is it enough that I did it once for setting up guix?
Kind regards
Gottfried