Re: Self-contained GuixSD Installer

[raingloom]

On Sun, 21 Mar 2021 18:56:05 -0700
Gurjeet Singh <gurjeet@singh.im> wrote:

> Does a self-contained GuixSD installer exist? I tried running GuixSD
> in a VM (in VBox, on macOS), and for that I downloaded the ISO image.
> The ISO image, after a few prompts, then tries to install everything
> from the internet.
> 
> If everything is being downloaded and installed from the internet, why
> does the image have to be so huge (~500MB
> guix-system-install-1.2.0.x86_64-linux.iso.xz)?
> 
> Is it possible to deliver the /gnu/store on the ISO so that a minimal
> system can be installed and started, without having to connect to the
> Internet? The user is free to install and upgrade packages from the
> internet, but they should be able to run GuixSD without the Internet
> being a hard requirement.
> 
> Best regards,
> --
> Gurjeet Singh http://gurjeet.singh.im/
> 

I think the installer does a `guix pull` before running `guix system
init`, so it has to download fresh packages.
I haven't used the graphical installer, but at leat that's how the old
school CLI install worked, at least as far as I remember.

You could just not guix pull, or if you did, you could pull the
specific commit that was used to build the system.

At least in theory.