Hi. What I remember happening was that on some package I got an error something like "could not get package such-and-such, may be caused by network errors" which wasn't fixed by running the command again. Then I ran with --fallback as recommended, but then it seemed to be building the entire gnome desktop from source. After a few hours of this it was still compiling low-level gnome packages, so I gave up, and the folks at #guix irc suggested guix pull.
To be honest, I can't remember which package it was. I'll try again with a fresh installation. On 11/22/2016 07:46 PM, Leo Famulari wrote: > On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 01:25:57PM -0900, Christopher Howard wrote: > > Welcome Christopher! > >> In the online installation docs at >> <https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Proceeding-with-the-Installation.html#Proceeding-with-the-Installation>, >> please insert the command 'guix pull' before the "guix system init" >> command. Otherwise installation can fail due to missing binary packages, >> which creates confusion for newbie installers like myself. Thank you! > > Can you give more detail about the problems you ran into? We want `guix > system init` to "just work". > > In general, if some binary fails to be substituted [0], adding > --fallback to the command should cause the package to be built from > source, working around the issue. > > I think that running `guix pull` before `guix system init` is not the > right choice for newbies, although there are some trade-offs [1]. > > Most new users will be installing from the binary GuixSD installer > offered on our web site. This installer is built from a Git commit that > we have tested to ensure that everything should work. We strive to keep > our master branch "deployable", but of course we make mistakes > sometimes. `guix pull` draws from the HEAD commit of the master branch, > and so new users might end up with a broken system as their first > experience. GuixSD is extremely robust once installed — you can always > roll-back — so it's a good idea to initialize from a known good commit > and then update. > > Additionally, it's likely that we will not yet have built binary > substitutes for the most recent changes on the master branch, so new > users will end up building some things from source if they use `guix > pull`. > > [0] Guix is a hybrid of build-from-source and binary package management > systems. It's really a build-from-source distro, but we offer so-called > "binary substitutes", and they are transparently substituted for a > source build if they are available and the user has authorized our > substitutes server. But, if Guix expects a package to be substituted > and something goes wrong, the action will fail. Using --fallback works > around this and builds from source even when the substitution fails. > > [1] I think the main drawback of installing from the release tag without > `guix pull` is that the initial generation of the GuixSD system will be > lacking important upstream bug fixes. I think users should `guix pull && > guix system reconfigure` immediately after initializing the system. Guix > actually nags users to do this: > > http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/guix/scripts/system.scm?id=08b3e4a97066c9baaf39e3df7c2dd9c39e693ead#n577 > -- Christopher Howard, Computer Assistant Alaska Satellite Internet 3239 La Ree Way, Fairbanks, AK 99709 907-451-0088 or 888-396-5623 (toll free) fax: 888-260-3584 mailto:christop...@alaskasi.com http://www.alaskasatelliteinternet.com
