[WIP] doc: update Guix install instructions #33574

1. 
   fanquake commented at 3:05 pm on October 8, 2025: member

   Not sure what to do here yet, but it’s somewhat annoying / concerning that Guix is falling out of being packaged by distros. For some more context, see https://lwn.net/Articles/1035491/.

   However, it is likely that the Guix package manager will soon be removed from the repositories for Debian 13 and Debian 12 (“bookworm”, also called oldstable).

   This seems to be happening. You can’t apt install guix using the current release of Debian. https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=guix. Guix is not going to be included in next release of Ubuntu (25.10): https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=guix.

   Looking at https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/guix, comments over the last few months seem to indicate that the build is broken.

2. [WIP] doc: update guix install instructions 6f291424df
3. 
   DrahtBot commented at 3:05 pm on October 8, 2025: contributor

   The following sections might be updated with supplementary metadata relevant to reviewers and maintainers.

   Code Coverage & Benchmarks

   For details see: https://corecheck.dev/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls/33574.

   Reviews

   See the guideline for information on the review process. A summary of reviews will appear here.

4. 
   janb84 commented at 3:38 pm on October 8, 2025: contributor

   Is there a reason (you know) why the project does not mention / recommend to install guix by using the shell installer as mentioned in the install doc of guix? Wouldn’t that be the answer to this problem? (Although not ideal)
5. 
   fanquake commented at 3:40 pm on October 8, 2025: member

   Is there a reason (you know) why the project does not mention / recommend to install guix by using the shell installer

   We do: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/contrib/guix/INSTALL.md#options-1-and-2-using-the-official-shell-installer-script-or-binary-tarball.

6. 
   m3dwards commented at 4:02 pm on October 8, 2025: contributor

   From reading the blog post it seems that the main issue is around how Guix chooses to manage releases making it hard for distro package maintainers to release backports. With a small userbase the effort doesn’t seem worth it for them.

   So perhaps the instructions should just focus on installing the guix binary from upstream. @fanquake is the concerning part for you that this might be a bad indicator for the guix project overall?

7. glozow added the label Docs on Oct 8, 2025
8. 
   trevarj commented at 8:28 pm on October 9, 2025: none

   While using Guix’s install.sh is my preferred method of installation on a “foreign distro”, I will acknowledge that it isn’t always a smooth experience. For example, when a user isn’t using bash as their shell and doesn’t know how Guix works they could miss the necessary env vars.

   A crazy idea could be to offer a .deb package that is created using guix pack -f deb -m manifest.scm, where the manifest contains guix itself and the packages within contrib/guix/manifest.scm. Users on dpkg distros (Debian, Ubuntu, etc) can have a one-click install solution. Other formats, like rpm, are supported as well. This could be put through the trust chain like how releases are and verified by users. Didn’t test this yet, but just brainstorming.

   this might be a bad indicator for the guix project overall? @m3dwards it is sad that Guix doesn’t receive as much attention and financial support as Nix, but they are working towards making changes to attract and retain users. From my understanding, the main point of Guix in the build process is that it’s bootstrappable

9. 
   maflcko commented at 6:22 am on October 10, 2025: member

   that this might be a bad indicator for the guix project overall?

   The LWN article concludes that “Regular releases” are planned, so it is likely that the situation will improve and possibly make backporting bugfixes easier in the future. So in theory, the guix package could make its way back into Debian/Ubuntu.

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fanquake DrahtBot janb84 m3dwards trevarj maflcko

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