Neovim channel for GNU Guix

I have set up a channel for GNU Guix to build Neovim. This channel serves as an experimental staging ground for porting Neovim (and perhaps other related projects in the future) to the Guix functional package manager. When the packages are deemed stable and correct enough they will be submitted to Guix proper.

What is functional package management?

The term "functional package management" comes from functional programming.

Functional programming

Let us consider the mathematical function f(x) = x^2. Its return value depends only on the argument (input) x, nothing else, it will not return some other value on a full moon night or anything like that. We say that it does not depend on any state. The other important thing is that the function has no side effects, it does not change anything in the world as if it were a magic spell.

     5
┌──╲   ╱──────┐      Function illustrated
│             │╱     as a machine. The input
│ f(x) = x^2    25   is 5 and the output is
│             │╲     the number 25
└─────────────┘

A function with these two properties is called pure. In mathematics all functions are pure, but in programming this is not necessarily the case. The return value of a function might depend on some external global variable and it might have side effects like changing a global variable or printing something to the screen. Functional programming aims to work with pure functions as much as possible, although sooner or later some compromises have to be made. There is a bit more to functional programming, but for our purposes these two properties suffice.

Functional package management

What does this have to do with package management? Consider a package definition as a function: it takes in a number of packages and produces a resulting package. In other words, instead of a function that maps several numbers to another number, we have a function which maps several packages to another package.

In the mathematical spirit we want our package definitions to be pure. This means that the package may only depend on the packages explicitly listed as dependencies (inputs), it must not use packages that are already installed on the system, and it must not alter the system.

A built package is stored in the store, a directory containing all the built packages. Since the packages are isolated from each other and only depend on packages we have explicitly listed as inputs, we can have all sorts of packages that would ordinarily conflict with each other.

In order to actually use those packages we still need to "install" them somehow. This this is done by setting up a profile, a directory of symbolic links to the actual binaries, libraries, scripts, manuals and whatever else there is. Usually there is one default profile for the user, but it is also possible to create new profiles on the fly, or roll back to a previous profile.

Functional package management was first implemented by Nix, and later implemented by GNU Guix. Where Nix uses a custom language of their own, Guix builds its language on top of GNU Guile, so package writers can make use of Scheme when defining their packages.

The Neovim channel

Guix version 0.16 added channels as a new feature, which allow users to pull in package definitions from unofficial sources as well. The manual explains it in detail, but here is the TL;DR: create the file ~/.config/guix/channels.scm and add the following contents:

(cons (channel
        (name 'neovim)
        (url "https://gitlab.com/HiPhish/neovim-guix-channel/"))
      %default-channels)

This will instruct Guix to use my channel in addition to the official default channel. Now run guix pull in order to pull in the definitions from the new channel and you should be good to go. In order to remove the channel remove file file or just remove the (channel (name 'neovim ... expression.