Re: Should I upgrade root user's guix too?

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

I think root profile doesn't have 0 (zero) packages installed. It has
guix. ;)

As a personal preference, I always do:

# guix pull && guix package -u

... as root, and then:

$ guix pull && guix package -u

... as normal user

Chris Marusich <address@hidden> writes:

>
> I see.  I incorrectly assumed you were using GuixSD.  It sounds like
> you've followed the steps described in the manual under "(guix) Binary
> Installation".  I see that you're running Guix on a foreign distro.
>
>
> The reason you should still run "guix pull" as root in this case is to
> ensure that when your system boots and starts guix-daemon, it starts an
> up-to-date version of the daemon, including any security patches and the
> like for any dependencies guix-daemon uses.  If you've followed the
> manual correctly, then I believe your system should be starting the
> guix-daemon executable that is installed in root's profile.  Because the
> executable lives in root's profile, if you don't run "guix pull" as root
> and then run "guix package -u ." (or equivalent) as root to update the
> guix-daemon that is installed there, you will never wind up using a more
> up-to-date version of guix-daemon.
>
> The package definitions are independent of which version of the
> guix-daemon is being used.  When a non-privileged user alice runs a
> command like "guix package -i hello" to install GNU Hello, she is using
> the package definitions that were installed by the latest "guix pull"
> that was run as the alice user (these package definitions live in the
> store, in a directory pointed to by the ~alice/.config/guix/latest
> symlink).  When alice invokes the guix command to install the hello
> package, the guix command essentially translates the package definition
> into a derivation, and then asks the guix-daemon (via remote procedure
> calls) to build that derivation.
>
> The translation from package definition to derivation happens in alice's
> "guix" process, which is independent of the "guix-daemon" process.  Her
> "guix" process communicates only via remote procedure calls with the
> "guix-daemon" process.  The guix-daemon has no knowledge of the
> "package" abstraction, and it doesn't need to know about packages.  For
> this reason, the guix-daemon doesn't necessarily need to be updated in
> order to build more up-to-date packages.  The guix-daemon just knows how
> to do basic things related to the store like add files, build
> derivations, perform garbage collection, etc.  It is the package
> definitions that are deployed to alice's home directory (via her latest
> invocation of "guix pull") that will determine which versions of
> packages get installed when alice runs "guix package -i", regardless of
> which version of the guix-daemon happens to be running.  The same is
> true for any other user (including root, actually).
>
>
> No, the order does not matter.  If alice runs those commands before root
> does, then alice will simply be able to install up-to-date packages
> before root can.  That is normal and expected for the reasons described
> above.  With Guix, each user independently manages their own
> installation of Guix.  If two users run "guix pull" at different times,
> they might very well wind up using different package definitions.  The
> ability for two different un-privileged users to independently install
> different versions of software at the same time without conflict is a
> feature of Guix (and Nix) that other package managers usually don't
> provide.
>
>
> Yes, you should restart the guix-daemon process.  One way to do that is
> to reboot.  However, for the reasons described above, alice will be able
> to install up-to-date software after running "guix pull" even if the
> guix-daemon process is old or hasn't yet been restarted.  And the only
> reason you ought to run "guix pull && guix package -u ." as root is to
> ensure that the guix-daemon - which happens to be installed in root's
> profile - is up-to-date.  If root had zero packages installed in root's
> profile, then there would be no point in running "guix pull && guix
> package -u ." as root at all.
>
> I hope that helps clarify things!  I also found this topic a bit
> confusing at first.

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