6.11 Primary URL

Channel authors can indicate the primary URL of their channel’s Git repository in the .guix-channel file, like so:

(channel
  (version 0)
  (url "https://example.org/guix.git"))

This allows guix pull to determine whether it is pulling code from a mirror of the channel; when that is the case, it warns the user that the mirror might be stale and displays the primary URL. That way, users cannot be tricked into fetching code from a stale mirror that does not receive security updates.

This feature only makes sense for authenticated repositories, such as the official guix channel, for which guix pull ensures the code it fetches is authentic.