Nix and Guix for Gentoo

Gentoo overlay for Nix and Guix functional package managers.

Enabling the overlay

First, let's enable the overlay. We can either use the eselect-repository method:

# Install eselect-repository if you don't already have it
emerge app-eselect/eselect-repository
# Fetch and output the list of overlays
eselect repository list
eselect repository enable nix-guix

or we can use the layman method:

# Add important USE flags for layman to your package.use directory:
echo "app-portage/layman sync-plugin-portage git" >> /etc/portage/package.use/layman
# Install layman if you don't already have it
emerge app-portage/layman
# Rebuild layman's repos.conf file:
layman-updater -R
# Add the Gentoo Haskell overlay:
layman -a nix-guix

Finally, we need to unmask the overlay (this does not apply if your system is already running ~arch):

# Unmask ~testing versions for your arch:
echo "*/*::nix-guix" >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords

Setup

Nix

Installation

The installation follows typical process of installing a daemon in gentoo:

emerge nix
# on system systems:
systemctl enable nix-daemon && systemctl start nix-daemon
# on openrc systems:
rc-update add nix-daemon && /etc/init.d/nix-daemon start

Then relogin as your user to import profile variables and pull in package definitions:

nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable
nix-channel --update

Next steps to try nix in action:

• https://trofi.github.io/posts/196-nix-on-gentoo-howto.html
• https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/

Guix

Installation

The installation follows typical process of installing a daemon in gentoo:

emerge guix
# on system systems:
systemctl enable guix-daemon && systemctl start guix-daemon
# on openrc systems:
rc-update add guix-daemon && /etc/init.d/guix-daemon start

First run

Upon first package installation Guix will create ~/.guix-profile symlink to /var/guix/profiles/per-user/${USER} (where ${USER} is your user account name in current shell).

In order to allow Guix to set all variables correctly execute those commands:

export GUIX_PROFILE="${HOME}/.guix-profile"
export GUIX_LOCPATH="${GUIX_PROFILE}/lib/locale"
source "${GUIX_PROFILE}/etc/profile"

The best way is to add the commands to your ${SHELL} profile file: ~/.profile / ~/.bash_profile / ~/.zprofile or equivalent.

To install a GNU hello package to test out Guix execute:

guix package -i hello

If you plan to use guix pull (and you probably are) you'll need to add it's PATH to your shell as well by following guix pull's suggestion:

export PATH="$HOME/.config/guix/current/bin:$PATH"
export INFOPATH="$HOME/.config/guix/current/share/info:$INFOPATH"

Next steps to try guix in action:

• http://trofi.github.io/posts/197-guix-on-gentoo-howto.html
• https://guix.gnu.org/manual/