Nix expressions.
To subscribe to a channel (needs to be done only once):
nix-channel --add \
http://catamaran.labs.cs.uu.nl/dist/nix/channels/nixpkgs-unstable
This just adds the given URL to ~/.nix-channels (which can also be
edited manually).
To update from all channels:
nix-channel --update
This fetches the latest expressions and pulls cache manifests. The
default Nix expression (~/.nix-defexpr) is made to point to the
conjunction of the expressions downloaded from all channels.
So to update all installed derivations in the current user
environment:
nix-channel --update
nix-env --upgrade '*'
If you are really courageous, you can put this in a cronjob or
something.
You can subscribe to multiple channels. It is not entirely clear
what happens when there are name clashes between derivations from
different channels. From nix-env/main.cc it appears that the one
with the lowest (highest?) hash will be used, which is pretty
meaningless.
environment variable. This is useful for passing authentication
information (it won't show up in `ps'). Hacky - nix-push should
abstract over the use of Curl.
default -> default-94-link
default-82-link -> /nix/store/cc4480...
default-83-link -> /nix/store/caeec8...
...
default-94-link -> /nix/store/2896ca...
experimental -> experimental-2-link
experimental-1-link -> /nix/store/cc4480...
experimental-2-link -> /nix/store/a3148f...
* `--profile' / `-p' -> `--switch-profile' / `-S'
* `--link' / `-l' -> `--profile' / `-p'
* The default profile is stored in $prefix/var/nix/profiles.
$prefix/var/nix/links is gone. Profiles can be stored anywhere.
* The current profile is now referenced from ~/.nix-profile, not
~/.nix-userenv.
* The roots to the garbage collector now have extension `.gcroot', not
`.id'.
the symlink ~/.nix-userenv to the given argument (which defaults to
.../links/current). /etc/profile.d/nix-profile creates this symlink
if it doesn't exist yet. Example use:
$ nix-env -l my_profile -i foo.nix subversion quake
$ nix-env -p my_profile
I don't like the term "profile". Let's deprecate it :-)
The script nix-install-package takes a `Nix package file' (which
contains one or more derivations, along with URLs of Nix caches),
unpacks it, pulls the caches, and installs the derivations in the
user's environment.
For best results, associate the command `xterm -e
/nix/bin/nix-install-package' with the MIME type
`application/x-nix-package' and visit
http://losser.st-lab.cs.uu.nl/~eelco/test/.
* Fixed a segfault caused by the buffering of stderr.
* Fix now allows the specification of the full output path. This
should be used with great care, since it by-passes the normal hash
generation.
* Incremented the version number to 0.4 (prerelease).
NAME'. E.g., on the losser Subversion server, I do `nix-switch --name
svn $(fix ...)' to atomically upgrade the server (the SVN server
uses the Apache and Subversion installations in /nix/var/nix/links/svn).
Renamed `fstateRefs' to `fstateRequisites'. The semantics of this
function is that it returns a list of all paths necessary to realise
a given expression. For a derive expression, this is the union of
requisites of the inputs; for a slice expression, it is the path of
each element in the slice. Also included are the paths of the
expressions themselves. Optionally, one can also include the
requisites of successor expressions (to recycle intermediate
results).
* `nix-switch' now distinguishes between an expression and its normal
form. Usually, only the normal form is registered as a root of the
garbage collector. With the `--source-root' flag, it will also
register the original expression as a root.
* `nix-collect-garbage' now has a flag `--keep-successors' which
causes successors not to be included in the list of garbage paths.
* `nix-collect-garbage' now has a flag `--invert' which will print all
paths that should *not* be garbage collected.
dynamically links against libdb4 (?!), due to LD_LIBRARY_PATH it picks
up our libdb4 instead of SuSE's libdb4, but our libdb4 uses another
glibc so loading barfs.
Instead, all packages should use rpaths to store library locations in
executables/libraries. The disadvantage is that overriding rpaths is
harder. (It is possible by invoking the dynamic linker directly, e.g.,
`/lib/ld-linux.so.2 --ignore-path LIST program args...' to ignore the
rpath for the libraries in LIST). It would be better to use DT_RUNPATH,
which is consulted by the dynamic linker *after* LD_LIBRARY_PATH but
*before* ld.so.cache and the system directories.
