Profiles and home configuration

Q: I heard that there are different ways to declare or install software packages into the environment. What are the use cases, the pros and cons?

A: You can manage and use packages in three different ways:

• System wide (at OS configuration)

• Manually in the users default profile

• In your home configuration (portable across computers)

• Use temporary environments (via guix shell python python-pandas bash --)

WARNING Only packages installed in the same way play well together by default. If you install the same package in different ways it will shadow all but on.

Example: You declared vim a system level package, so that it is available for everyone. But a user installed it in his default profile as well. The system vim is then shadowed. If - for some reason - the user additionally declares vim in his home configuration, it will shadow the others as well.

If you install extension packages like vim-nerdtree in the system profile it might not be available for the vim at default user profile or home configuration profile, because the matching vim is shadowed.

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