GNU Guix

ID

guix

Links

Home page · Documentation · Repository · Wikipedia

Upstream stars

⭐ 978

Last commit

2026-09-29

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installed · outdated · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup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: guix --version reports a release tag, a git describe string, or the bare commit hash of an in-tree checkout. No requirement floor is enforced, since any working guix will do.

Warning

search evaluates every package definition to match the query, so its cost scales with the size of the package set, not the result count: tens of seconds on a freshly pulled Guix, longer still from an in-tree development checkout. The call is bounded by mpm --timeout (120s by default), past which it is killed with no results returned, so a slow search can look like a hang.

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Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover guix alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of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List outdated packages	guix upgrade --dry-run	mpm --guix outdated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 hello	mpm --guix search hello
Install a package	guix install hello	mpm install pkg:guix/hello
Upgrade one package	guix upgrade hello	mpm --guix upgrade hello
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	2.10	out	/gnu/store/k74skdjjb9c9zqjv9nmgd6zi92wpf3q0-hello-2.10
python	3.10.7	out	/gnu/store/2n3g8n7d5xkp6h4qz1v8m0rjc9wf5aby-python-3.10.7

$ guix upgrade --dry-run
The following packages would be upgraded:
   hello 2.12.1 → 2.12.3
   sed   4.8 → 4.9

Version check

The version is probed by running:

$ guix --version
guix (GNU Guix) 1.4.0

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
Activity
Popularity

Changelog

• 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.