Re: Confusion around the new `guix pull'

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

Fis Trivial <address@hidden> skribis:

> * Is it ok to remove /usr/local/bin/guix ?

It’s OK to remove this symlink *if* all your users have already
populated ~/.config/guix/current.

> Now the new guix command is resided in ~/.config/guix/current, is the
> old one (linked from /root/.guix-profile/bin/guix manually) still
> needed? I don't have any other users other than root and my current user
> needs to use it.

The old one is still needed for root because it provides ‘guix-daemon’,
which ‘guix pull’ doesn’t build currently.

(In the future ‘guix pull’ will provide
~/.config/guix/current/bin/guix-daemon, and at that point the old one
can be removed altogether.)

Regardless, ~/.config/guix/current/bin should come first in $PATH so
that you get to run the latest ‘guix’ command.

> Or, as a normal user(non-root), is there any different between using the
> one linked at installation time (the one from root's profile) and the
> one from $HOME/.config/guix/bin?

Users should use ~/.config/guix/current/bin/guix because it’s going to
be up-to-date, whereas /usr/local/bin/guix may remain old.

> * What's the different for ~/.guix-profile/bin/guix and
>   ~/.config/guix/current/bin/guix for root user account.

The latter can be upgraded anytime by running ‘guix pull’; the former
cannot be upgraded.

> As a root user, there are two guix command now, as shown in the question
> title.
>
>         Which one should I use?
>
>         What are the differences?
>
>         Is there a right way to remove the duplication?
>
>
> Or is there a section of documentation that explains the relationship
> between the `guix' in /root/.guix-profile/bin and one in
> /root/.config/guix/current/bin? I didn't found it, but if there is one,
> please point me to it.

One way to look at it is that ‘guix pull’ provides an up-to-date Guix
(sans guix-daemon).  Conversely, the package in ~root/.guix-profile is a
fixed snapshot of Guix.  We update the ‘guix’ package in Guix from time
to time, and you can upgrade it that way, but basically normal users
should only care about ~/.config/guix/current.

HTH!

Ludo’.