Hello, there has been a long thread recently clarifying a lot around guix, builds and substitutions. Explore the thread for lots of clarifying info: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2017-11/msg00009.html
But in short summary: Guix is a build from source system and the substitutes are possible and sometime available because of the functional aspect. As I understand it, the substitutes are often (and randomly) not available because of difficulty of scheduling and storage on the build farm (hydra). So guix will often build things, even if you want substitutes. Take my word with a grain of salt. And Welcome! :) On Sun, 12 Nov 2017 14:30:36 -0800 Mason Hock <masonh...@gmail.com> wrote: > Guix seems to be building everything from source, which can take a > while. As per these instructions I tried > > # cd [prefix]/share/guix/hydra.gnu.org.pub > # guix archive --authorize < hydra.gnu.org.pub > and got > > guile: warning: failed to install locale > warning: failed to install locale: Invalid argument > > with no other output. I get that error almost every time I try to do > something with Guix and it usually works anyway. Since I got no other > errors I just kept going with > > $ guix build emacs --dry-run > > and got "The following derivations would be built:" so apparently it > did not work. > > During an installation I do see a lot of "updating list of substitutes" > messages, but I also frequently see the word "build" and a lot of .c > and .h files go by, which combined with the long installation time > makes me doubt that it is actually downloading binaries from the > substitutes and installing them. >
