libguix

Unofficial Rust client library for GNU Guix.

Wraps the guix CLI and its machine-readable REPL (guix repl -t machine) so you can drive package management, system administration, and builds from Rust without parsing human-readable output. Designed for long-running operations: every write returns an Operation with a coalesced event stream and a CancelHandle.

Module map

The module tree mirrors guix --help so navigating the library reads like navigating the CLI:

Examples

Search and list:

use libguix::Guix;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>> {
    let guix = Guix::discover().await?;
    for hit in guix.package().search_fast("ripgrep").await? {
        println!("{} — {}", hit.name, hit.synopsis);
    }
    Ok(())
}

Streaming install (REPL-backed, with structured fd-3 events):

use futures_util::StreamExt;
use libguix::ProgressEvent;

let mut op = guix.package().install(&["ripgrep", "fd"])?;
while let Some(batch) = op.events_mut().next().await {
    for evt in batch {
        if let ProgressEvent::Line { text, .. } = evt {
            println!("{}", text);
        }
    }
}
op.await_completion().await?;

Run a command in an ad-hoc environment (guix shell):

let op = guix.shell().run(&["rust", "rust:cargo"], "cargo", &["check"])?;
op.await_completion().await?;

Build a package and collect its store paths (guix build):

let paths = guix.build().run_to_paths(&["hello"]).await?;
for p in paths {
    println!("{}", p.display());
}

Pull the user catalog, or the root catalog under pkexec:

use libguix::SystemPullOptions;

let op = guix.pull().user()?;                                  // ~/.config/guix/current
let op = guix.pull().as_root(SystemPullOptions::default())?;   // /var/guix/profiles/per-user/root

Requirements

A working guix binary on PATH (or at /run/current-system/profile/bin/guix). Tested against modern Guix releases — see MIN_GUIX_VERSION_DATE.

The privileged paths (SystemOps::reconfigure, PullOps::as_root) additionally need polkit actions installed and an authentication agent running in your session. The library returns a structured PolkitFailure error if either is missing.

Features

Status

Pre-1.0. The API will shift as the GUI consuming it (in the same repo) grows. Pin a specific version if you depend on it.

License

GPL-3.0-only.