7.5 Package Modules

From a programming viewpoint, the package definitions of the GNU distribution are provided by Guile modules in the (gnu packages …) name space²¹ (see Guile modules in GNU Guile Reference Manual). For instance, the (gnu packages emacs) module exports a variable named emacs, which is bound to a <package> object (see Defining Packages).

The (gnu packages …) module name space is automatically scanned for packages by the command-line tools. For instance, when running guix package -i emacs, all the (gnu packages …) modules are scanned until one that exports a package object whose name is emacs is found. This package search facility is implemented in the (gnu packages) module.

Users can store package definitions in modules with different names—e.g., (my-packages emacs)²². These package definitions will not be visible by default. Thus, users can invoke commands such as guix package and guix build have to be used with the -e option so that they know where to find the package. Better yet, they can use the -L option of these commands to make those modules visible (see --load-path), or define the GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable. This environment variable makes it easy to extend or customize the distribution and is honored by all the user interfaces.

Environment Variable: GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH

This is a colon-separated list of directories to search for package modules. Directories listed in this variable take precedence over the distribution’s own modules.

The distribution is fully bootstrapped and self-contained: each package is built based solely on other packages in the distribution. The root of this dependency graph is a small set of bootstrap binaries, provided by the (gnu packages bootstrap) module. For more information on bootstrapping, see Bootstrapping.