GNU Guix

ID

guix

Links

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Upstream stars

⭐ 980

Last commit

2026-10-06

Platforms

🐧 Linux

Operations

installed · outdated · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup

purl types

pkg:guix/

CLI name

guix

Issues and PRs

📦 manager: guix

Source

guix.py

GNU Guix, GNU’s functional package manager.

Note

All operations target the current user’s default profile. Declarative system configuration (Guix System config.scm) is not covered.

Guix is a rolling release with no upstream semver to pin against: the guix of a fresh install reports its release, and once guix pull ran, the commit it was built from. No requirement floor is enforced, since any working guix will do.

Caution

sync runs guix pull, which outlasts the 500 second ceiling mpm puts on a state-changing command. A first pull authenticates the commit history of the channel, then builds Guix itself when no substitute is available yet: on an aarch64 virtual machine, it took 28 minutes. Raise the ceiling for this manager alone, in the configuration file:

[mpm.overrides.guix]
timeout = 3600

Note

guix pull builds a cache of the package set, so search answers in about a second. A guix run from a development checkout has no such cache and evaluates every package definition instead: there a search can outlast the 120 second ceiling of a read-only command, which kills it with no results.

What mpm adds to guix

Through mpm, guix gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover guix alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your guix commands, in mpm

You already know guix: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With guix	With mpm
List what’s installed	guix package --list-installed	mpm --guix installed
List outdated packages	guix upgrade --dry-run	mpm --guix outdated
Search for a package	guix search cowsay	mpm --guix search cowsay
Install a package	guix install hello	mpm install pkg:guix/hello
Upgrade one package	guix upgrade ^lua$	mpm --guix upgrade ^lua$
Upgrade everything	guix upgrade	mpm --guix upgrade --all
Remove a package	guix remove hello	mpm remove pkg:guix/hello
Clear caches	guix gc	mpm --guix cleanup --cache

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations

Operation	Supported	Notes
installed	✅
outdated	✅
orphans
search	✅	Exact and extended search backfilled by mpm.
install	✅
upgrade	✅
upgrade_all	✅
remove	✅
sync	✅
cleanup	✅
doctor

Configuration

• Ignore guix on the mpm CLI by passing the --no-guix option.

• Ignore it for every run in your configuration:

  [mpm]
  guix = false
  

• Raise the timeout of all guix calls:

  [mpm.overrides.guix]
  timeout = 900
  

• Run mpm config-template guix to print all overridable settings for your configuration file:

  [mpm.overrides.guix]
  cli_names = [
      "guix",
  ]
  cli_search_path = []
  dry_run = false
  ignore_auto_updates = true
  plan = false
  post_args = []
  pre_args = []
  pre_cmds = []
  stop_on_error = false
  unmaintained = false
  version_cli_options = [
      "--version",
  ]
  version_regexes = [
      "guix \\(GNU Guix\\) (?P<version>\\d[\\w.\\-+]*)",
      "guix \\(GNU Guix\\) (?P<version>[0-9a-f]{7,40})\\b",
  ]
  

Recipes

A few jobs you would otherwise script around guix, one mpm command each:

• Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --guix dump guix.toml, then mpm restore guix.toml on the next one.

• Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --guix sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

Privilege escalation

mpm runs this manager as the current user and never prepends sudo by default. Flip the policy for its privileged operations with --sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

None of its operations is privileged.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown

State of GNU Guix’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

• Registry: Git-manifest indexes

• Retraction: Index revert: reverting the manifest, Portfile or derivation commit withdraws the version

• Publish date: ❌ only the commit date, which is client-set and trivially backdated. A date declared in the manifest, like winget’s optional ReleaseDate, is author-supplied too and no sounder

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Reference traces

A collection of raw native outputs captured from the manager’s own CLI and recorded in the manager source. If you know GNU Guix well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ guix package --list-installed
hello          	2.12.2	out	/gnu/store/8qjzxdk26p8c5nyj98s3321vbkmv9za0-hello-2.12.2
lua            	5.1.5 	out	/gnu/store/sq2sj9gj8bqzgv493249xd8gzhhw1f0x-lua-5.1.5
glib           	2.83.3	out	/gnu/store/h95r1yvlbrlqap6l8fsdzp7lpxair7sv-glib-2.83.3
glib           	2.83.3	bin	/gnu/store/06w4p65r8hli2qnsdsnp0l8r1zghz5qr-glib-2.83.3-bin
glib-networking	2.78.1	out	/gnu/store/n4nicicydz8d24m2qi3ddwlcxlr534qn-glib-networking-2.78.1

Version check

The version is probed by running:

$ guix --version
guix (GNU Guix) 1.5.0
Copyright (C) 2025 the Guix authors
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

and extracted with the first of these regular expressions to match:

r"guix \(GNU Guix\) (?P<version>\d[\w.\-+]*)"
r"guix \(GNU Guix\) (?P<version>[0-9a-f]{7,40})\b"

Upstream project

Metrics	guix/guix
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Changelog

• 8.1.0 (2026-10-04)

  • List a package output other than out as a package of its own, like glib:bin, which install and remove take back.

  • Fix outdated reporting no package while updates are available.

  • Fix upgrade <package> also upgrading every installed package whose name contains <package>, like glib-networking for glib.

  • Fix install crashing on a package Guix ships in several versions, like lua, which search now lists once, at its newest version.

  • Strip the trailing spaces from the package IDs of installed and the descriptions of search results.

  • Note on its page that a first guix pull outlasts the default timeout of sync, and how to raise it.

• 6.4.1 (2026-05-04)

  • Drop the >=1.0.0 version requirement and add a hex-hash regex variant, so guix pull installs and dev wrappers reporting a git commit hash register as available.

• 6.4.0 (2026-04-27)

  • Add GNU Guix package manager with installed, outdated, search, install, upgrade, remove, sync, and cleanup support.