Re: Help with .deb, .rpm and guix packaging.

[Ekaitz Zarraga]

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Thursday, October 29, 2020 5:34 PM, Aniket Patil <aniket112.patil@gmail.com> 
wrote:

> Hi,
> There are GNU/Linux distros which are Debian-based or fedora(Redhat) based
> etc. What I know to my knowledge is GNU packages are .tar packages with
> .deb and .rpm file format, am I right? What I am wondering about how guix
> makes it happen? I mean are we bypassing the process of making the package
> in .deb and .rpm format and releasing it, or what exactly are we doing? To
> my knowledge, we are building from source code as we can see in the recipe.
> So that means we are bypassing the process of making packages explicitly
> for the distro, aren't we?
>
> Where can I learn more about this? I am going through guix manual but I
> don't know which chapter to look for. Also, where can I learn more about
> packaging software on GNU/Linux distribution? Like .deb or .rpm
>
> Regards,
> Aniket.

Hi Aniket,

In the distros you mention, software is pre-compiled and the .tar packages
have a directory structure that defines where do the packaged files need
to be installed. Those packages don't define how the software has to be
compiled and they don't include the sources.

Guix is not bypassing those systems: Guix is one of those systems. Guix is
a package manager.

The main difference is that Guix describes how is the source compiled and
installed in a recipe. When the user installs a package using:

guix install packagename

The package sources are downloaded, compiled and installed in the system,
following the recipe.

Guix also has ways to keep packages separated to avoid dependency collisions,
ad-hoc environments, time traveling, package installation history with a
reasonable rollback system... and some other interesting features.

Guix is also a software distribution built on top of the Guix package manager
that extends those interesting tools further and defines a uniform way to
describe your operating system.

Hope this helps.

If you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask them.

Regards,
Ekaitz