Jeko

Summary

• Taking baby steps with Guix (1) : the basics

In addition to your default profile ~/.guix-profile, you can create as many profiles as you want (if you find it useful). For example, I have a profile dedicated to programming with Guile, in which I have installed the latest version of the language, extensions to Emacs, and some libraries I use frequently.

Tell me for which activity would you like to be able to manage software packages with a profile?

In the rest of this article, I consider that you have created a directory dedicated to your profiles (of course, you can choose another name) :

$ mkdir ~/.custom-profile

Create a profile

Guix creates the profiles on demand. It's a transparent mechanism for you. For example, the command below goes :

• create the profile ~/.custom-profile/to-dev if it doesn't already exist.
• download the hello package if it is not already in the package repository.
• point the profile ~/.custom-profile/to-dev to the hello package in the package store.

$ guix --install=hello --profile=${HOME}/.custom-profile/to-dev

Manage profiles

As with the default profile, you can apply the following operations in each of them:

• add --install
• remove --move
• update --upgrade
• lister --list-installed

To do this, you need to specify the profile in question with the --profile option.

When you start to get a taste for this feature, the number of profiles quickly becomes significant. Here is the command to get the list of your profiles :

$ guix package --list-profiles

If you feel you no longer need a profile, you can delete it with this command:

$ rm ~/.custom-profile/to-dev*

Using packages from a profile

By default, only the packages installed in your default profile are accessible.

To activate a profile (and thus be able to use the software installed in it), you need to execute the following command:

$ GUIX_PROFILE="${HOME}/.custom-profile/to-dev" \
. "${GUIX_PROFILE}/etc/profile"

Useful links :

• https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/guix.html#Package-Management

Thank you so much for reading this article !

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