* Manual updates.

* Updated the README.  Now it just refers to the manual.
This commit is contained in:
Eelco Dolstra 2004-01-20 11:49:32 +00:00
parent 699989b216
commit 8baf50f108
4 changed files with 124 additions and 74 deletions

39
README
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@ -1,36 +1,5 @@
Overview
========
*** Nix ***
Nix is a package manager, deployment system, and component glue
mechanism.
Prerequisites
=============
* Berkeley DB 4.0.14
* CWI ATerm 2.0
Installation
============
* When building from the Subversion repository, first do:
autoreconf -i
* To build, do:
./configure
make
make install
Note that this will install to /nix, which is the default prefix.
You can specify another prefix, but this is not recommended if you
want to use prebuilt packages from other sources.
Usage
=====
TODO
For installation and usage instructions, please read the manual, which
can be found in docs/manual/manual.html, and additionally at the Nix
website at <http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/ST/Trace/NixDeploymentSystem>.

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@ -6,8 +6,9 @@
<para>
The easiest way to obtain Nix is to download a <ulink
url='http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/ST/Trace/Nix'>source
distribution.</ulink>
url='http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/ST/Trace/Nix'>source
distribution</ulink>. RPMs for SuSE and Red Hat are also
available. These distributions are generated automatically.
</para>
<para>
@ -35,8 +36,13 @@ $ svn checkout https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/repos/trace/nix/trunk nix</screen>
<title>Prerequisites</title>
<para>
A fairly recent version of GCC/G++ is required. Version 2.95 and higher
should work.
The following prerequisites only apply when you build from
source. Binary releases (e.g., RPMs) have no prerequisites.
</para>
<para>
A fairly recent version of GCC/G++ is required. Version 2.95
and higher should work.
</para>
<para>
@ -63,7 +69,7 @@ $ svn checkout https://svn.cs.uu.nl:12443/repos/trace/nix/trunk nix</screen>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Building Nix</title>
<title>Building Nix from source</title>
<para>
After unpacking or checking out the Nix sources, issue the following
@ -112,20 +118,71 @@ $ autoreconf -i</screen>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Installing from RPMs</title>
<para>
RPM packages of Nix can be downloaded from <ulink
url='http://www.cs.uu.nl/groups/ST/Trace/Nix' />. These RPMs
should work for most fairly recent releases of SuSE and Red Hat
Linux. They have been known to work work on SuSE Linux 8.1 and
9.0, and Red Hat 9.0. In fact, it should work on any RPM-based
Linux distribution based on <literal>glibc</literal> 2.3 or
later.
</para>
<para>
Once downloaded, the RPMs can be installed or upgraded using
<command>rpm -U</command>. For example,
</para>
<screen>
rpm -U nix-0.5pre664-1.i386.rpm</screen>
<para>
The RPMs install into the directory <filename>/nix</filename>.
Nix can be uninstalled using <command>rpm -e nix</command>.
After this it will be necessary to manually remove the Nix store
and other auxiliary data:
</para>
<screen>
rm -rf /nix/store
rm -rf /nix/var</screen>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Permissions</title>
<para>
All Nix operations must be performed under the user ID that owns
the Nix store and database
(<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/store</filename>
and
<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/var/nix/db</filename>,
respectively). When installed from the RPM packages, these
directories are owned by <systemitem
class='username'>root</systemitem>.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<title>Using Nix</title>
<para>
To use Nix, some environment variables should be set. In particular,
<envar>PATH</envar> should contain the directories
To use Nix, some environment variables should be set. In
particular, <envar>PATH</envar> should contain the directories
<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/bin</filename> and
<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/var/nix/links/current/bin</filename>.
The first directory contains the Nix tools themselves, while the second
contains to the current <emphasis>user environment</emphasis> (an
automatically generated package consisting of symlinks to installed
packages). The simplest way to set the required environment variables is
to include the file
<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/etc/profile.d/nix.sh</filename>
<filename>~/.nix-userenv/bin</filename>. The first directory
contains the Nix tools themselves, while
<filename>~/.nix-userenv</filename> is a symbolic link to the
current <emphasis>user environment</emphasis> (an automatically
generated package consisting of symlinks to installed packages).
The simplest way to set the required environment variables is to
include the file
<filename><replaceable>prefix</replaceable>/etc/profile.d/nix.sh</filename>
in your <filename>~/.bashrc</filename> (or similar), like this:
</para>
@ -135,9 +192,3 @@ $ autoreconf -i</screen>
</sect1>
</chapter>
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@ -91,11 +91,3 @@
</para>
</chapter>
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@ -5,6 +5,10 @@
This chapter provides a guided tour of Nix.
</para>
<!--######################################################################-->
<sect1>
<title>Basic package management</title>
@ -63,7 +67,7 @@ pan-0.14.2</screen>
</para>
<screen>
$ nix-env -qf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix
$ nix-env -qaf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix
gettext-0.12.1
sylpheed-0.9.7
aterm-2.0
@ -86,7 +90,7 @@ pan-0.14.2
</para>
<screen>
$ nix-env -qsf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix
$ nix-env -qasf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix
-P gettext-0.12.1
IP sylpheed-0.9.7
-- aterm-2.0
@ -111,7 +115,7 @@ IP sylpheed-0.9.7
</para>
<screen>
$ nix-env -i pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix pan-0.14.2</screen>
$ nix-env -if pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix pan</screen>
<para>
Since installation may take a long time, depending on whether any
@ -234,11 +238,52 @@ lrwxrwxrwx 1 eelco ... svn -> /nix/store/3829...fb5d-subversion-0.32.1/bin/svn
</para>
<screen>
$ nix-env -u pan-0.14.2</screen>
$ nix-env -e pan</screen>
<para>
This means that the package is removed from the user
environment. It is <emphasis>not</emphasis> yet removed from
the system. When a package is uninstalled from a user
environment, it may still be used by other packages, or may
still be present in other user environments. Deleting it under
such conditions would break those other packages or user
environments. To prevent this, packages are only
<quote>physically</quote> deleted by running the Nix garbage
collector, which searches for all packages in the Nix store that
are no longer <quote>reachable</quote> from outside the store.
Thus, uninstalling a package is always safe: it cannot break
other packages.
</para>
<para>
Upgrading packages is easy. Given a Nix expression that
contains newer versions of installed packages (that is, packages
with the same package name, but a higher version number),
<command>nix-env -u</command> will replace the installed package
in the user environment with the newer package. For example,
<screen>
$ nix-env -uf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix pan</screen>
looks for a newer version of Pan, and installs it if found.
Also useful is the ability to upgrade <emphasis>all</emphasis>
packages:
<screen>
$ nix-env -uf pkgs/system/i686-linux.nix '*'</screen>
The asterisk matches all installed packages<footnote><para>No,
we don't support arbitrary regular
expressions</para></footnote>. Note that <literal>*</literal>
must be quoted to prevent shell globbing.
</para>
</sect1>
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<sect1>
<title>Writing Nix expressions</title>
@ -400,11 +445,4 @@ derivation {
</sect1>
</chapter>
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