Installation Guide

Installing the Channel

This is a Guix channel. You will first need to install Guix itself. Then, simply create a new ~/.config/guix/channels.scm file with this content:

(cons* (channel
        (name 'guix-home-manager)
        (url "https://framagit.org/tyreunom/guix-home-manager.git"))
       %default-channels)

Then run guix pull to pull the new channel.

If the file already exist, simply add the (channel) form above to the list of channels in the file. Make sure you use (cons*) (with a star) and not (cons) since the later can only take one channel and %default-channels as argument, whereas the first can take as many channels as you'd like before %default-channels.

Important checks

Make sure your guix environment is set up properly. You need to have ~/.config/guix/current as the first item in your $PATH or you're going to run into troubles. Additionnaly, after running guix pull, make sure you run hash guix in any open terminal to make sure bash's cache is cleared of the old guix binary location.

Usage

Making some room in your home directory

Your home directory will be completely taken over by Guix. In particular, when using the home manager, your home directory is entirely read-only. A read-only home directory is not very useful though, so users of the home manager will have to use a separate directory for their documents, caches and states. This is typically /data/alice for user alice.

It is not required to set up that directory beforehand, but if you do, you will not be able to use the home manager until you have completely wiped-out your home directory (i.e. transfered it to the new directory). If the directory does not yet exist, your current home directory is automatically renamed to that directory, and the home manager starts working.

Basically, you will run (as root):

mkdir /data
mv /home/alice /data/alice

Once that is done, some parts of your home directory will still have to be read-write. This is mostly ~/.cache, ~/.local but also ~/.guix-profile and ~/.config/guix. Inside your new data directory, create them like this, as your regular user (alice in this example):

cd /data/alice
mkdir-p .local/share .cache .config

Since you have moved your entire home directory, make sure you can still access your own copy of guix and your user profile by (temporarily) setting your $PATH (make sure it starts with /data/alice/.config/guix/current/bin) and by sourcing the profile with export GUIX_PROFILE=/data/alice/.guix-profile; source $GUIX_PROFILE/etc/profile. You might also need to run hash -r (no output) for bash to clear all its memorized binary locations.

Creating the first home generation

To create your first home configuration, you must create a configuration file. For instance, create /data/alice/.config/guix/home.scm:

(use-modules (home))

(home
  (data-directory "/data/alice"))

This will generate a completely empty home, except for essential configurations, i. e. writable XDG directories as well as essential guix symlinks.

See the documentation to learn more about the configuration system.

Because of a bug in guix, the guix home command will not be found immediately: the search for the command is done too early, before guix adds the channels to its search path. Add them to the guile search path, so guix will be able to find them. Note that if you are running bash, the home manager will take care of that after you install the first generation:

export GUILE_LOAD_PATH=~/.config/guix/current/share/guile/site/3.0:$GUILE_LOAD_PATH
export GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH=~/.config/guix/current/lib/guile/3.0/site-ccache:$GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH

To build your first generation of your home environment, run as your regular user:

guix home reconfigure /data/alice/.config/guix/home.scm

That's it!