2022-12-08 18:24 pa...@disroot.org:
> Some of you may have seen on IRC that I've been writing a post for the Guix
> blog that I hope will form the first part of a series. This series aims to
> dissect the internals of Guix, from bottom to top.
Great, I'm looking forward to read it! Especially, personally, I'm eager for
the rather fundamental concepts of Guix (and Nix).
> Perhaps they could go in the cookbook once the series is done?
Yes, I personally think the content should be published at two places at the
same time: OTOH, it should either be incorporated into either the manual or the
cookbook; and OTOH, it should be published as a blog-post. The blog-post should
also link to the respective section of the manual or cookbook in a preamble.
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 1: Derivations
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 2: The Humble G-Expression
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 3: Packages
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 4: Monads
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 5: Profiles and Search Paths
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 6: Goings-On in the Build Container
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 7: Record Types
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 8: Substitutes and Grafts
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 9: Cross-Compilation
I think it'd also be fine to come up with the titles during the process of
writing as sometimes that process itself is insightful. E.g. I could imagine
parts 2 and 4 to collapse. Maybe, maybe not, you'll see.
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 10: Services
>
> Walks you through the process of creating a service, and thouroughly explains
> system configuration.
How'd this part differ from section "12.18 Defining Services" of the manual?
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 11: Home Services
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 12: Writing a Subcommand
> * Dissecting Guix, Part 13: Lending a Hand
>
> How to edit the Guix source code and submit patches to be reviewed by the
> lovely Guix community!
How'd this part differ from sections 22 and "22.6 Submitting Patches" from the
manual?
Now, as for the actual article. Firstly, I added some comments below. Secondly,
I created a "patch" suggesting some changes.
By the way, the text does not seem to strictly fill columns at a certain line
width. So I did not bother to fill columns in the "patch".
> title: Dissecting Guix, Part 1: Derivations and Derivation
> date: TBC
> author: (
> tags: Dissecting Guix, Functional package management, Programming interfaces,
> Scheme API
> ---
> To a new user, Guix's functional architecture can seem quite alien, and
> possibly offputting. With a combination of extensive `#guix`-querying,
> determined manual-reading, and plenty of source-perusing, they may
> eventually figure out how everything fits together by themselves, but this
> can be frustrating and often takes a fairly long time.
>
> However, once you peel back the layers, the "Nix way" is actually rather
> elegant, if perhaps not as simple as the mutable, imperative style
> implemented by the likes of [`dpkg`](https://wiki.debian.org/dpkg) and,
> [`pacman`](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/pacman). This series of blog
> posts will cover basic Guix concepts, taking a "ground-up" approach by
> dealing with lower-level concepts first, and hopefully make those months of
> information-gathering unnecessary.
>
> Before we dig in to Guix-specific concepts, we'll need to learn about one
> inherited from [Nix](https://nixos.org), the original functional package
> manager and the inspiration for Guix; the idea of a _derivation_ and its
> corresponding _store items_.
>
> These concepts were originally described by Eelco Dolstra, the author of Nix,
> in their [PhD thesis](https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf); see
> _§ 2.1 The Nix store_ and _§ 2.4 Store Derivations_.
>
> # Store Items
>
> As you almost certainly know, everything that Guix builds is stored in the
> _store_, which is almost always the `/gnu/store` directory. It's the job of
> the
> [`guix-daemon`](https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix_002ddaemon.html)
> to manage the store and build things. If you run
> [`guix build
> PKG`](https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-build.html),
> `PKG` will be built or downloaded from a substitute server if available, and
> a path to an item in the store will be displayed.
>
> ```
> $ guix build irssi
> /gnu/store/v5pd69j3hjs1fck4b5p9hd91wc8yf5qx-irssi-1.4.3
> ```
>
> This item contains the final result of building [`irssi`](https://irssi.org).
> Let's peek inside:
>
> ```
> $ ls $(guix build irssi)
> bin/ etc/ include/ lib/ share/
> $ ls $(guix build irssi)/bin
> irssi*
> ```
>
> `irssi` is quite a simple package. What about a more complex one, like
> [`glib`](https://docs.gtk.org/glib)?
>
> ```
> $ guix build glib
> /gnu/store/bx8qq76idlmjrlqf1faslsq6zjc6f426-glib-2.73.3-bin
> /gnu/store/j65bhqwr7qq7l77nj0ahmk1f1ilnjr3a-glib-2.73.3-debug
> /gnu/store/3pn4ll6qakgfvfpc4mw89qrrbsgj3jf3-glib-2.73.3-doc
> /gnu/store/dvsk6x7d26nmwsqhnzws4iirb6dhhr1d-glib-2.73.3
>
