6 Package Management

The purpose of GNU Guix is to allow users to easily install, upgrade, and remove software packages, without having to know about their build procedures or dependencies. Guix also goes beyond this obvious set of features.

This chapter describes the main features of Guix, as well as the package management tools it provides. Along with the command-line interface described below (see guix package), you may also use the Emacs-Guix interface (see The Emacs-Guix Reference Manual), after installing emacs-guix package (run M-x guix-help command to start with it):

guix install emacs-guix

• Features
• Invoking guix package
• Substitutes
• Packages with Multiple Outputs
• Invoking guix gc
• Invoking guix pull
• Invoking guix time-machine
• Inferiors
• Invoking guix describe
• Invoking guix archive