lix/doc/manual/packages/basic-package-mgmt.xml

<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
      xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
      xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
      version="5.0"
      xml:id="ch-basic-package-mgmt">

<title>Basic Package Management</title>

<para>The main command for package management is <link
linkend="sec-nix-env"><command>nix-env</command></link>.  You can use
it to install, upgrade, and erase packages, and to query what
packages are installed or are available for installation.</para>

<para>In Nix, different users can have different “views”
on the set of installed applications.  That is, there might be lots of
applications present on the system (possibly in many different
versions), but users can have a specific selection of those active —
where “active” just means that it appears in a directory
in the user’s <envar>PATH</envar>.  Such a view on the set of
installed applications is called a <emphasis>user
environment</emphasis>, which is just a directory tree consisting of
symlinks to the files of the active applications.  </para>

<para>Components are installed from a set of <emphasis>Nix
expressions</emphasis> that tell Nix how to build those packages,
including, if necessary, their dependencies.  There is a collection of
Nix expressions called the Nix Package collection that contains
packages ranging from basic development stuff such as GCC and Glibc,
to end-user applications like Mozilla Firefox.  (Nix is however not
tied to the Nix Package collection; you could write your own Nix
expressions based on it, or completely new ones.)</para>

<para>You can manually download the latest version of Nixpkgs from
<link xlink:href='http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/download.html'/>. However,
it’s much more convenient to use the Nixpkgs
<emphasis>channel</emphasis>, since it makes it easy to stay up to
date with new versions of Nixpkgs. (Channels are described in more
detail in <xref linkend="sec-channels"/>.) Nixpkgs is automatically
added to your list of “subscribed” channels when you install
Nix. If this is not the case for some reason, you can add it as
follows:

<screen>
$ nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable
$ nix-channel --update
</screen>

</para>

<note><para>On NixOS, you’re automatically subscribed to a NixOS
channel corresponding to your NixOS major release
(e.g. <uri>http://nixos.org/channels/nixos-14.12</uri>). A NixOS
channel is identical to the Nixpkgs channel, except that it contains
only Linux binaries and is updated only if a set of regression tests
succeed.</para></note>

<para>You can view the set of available packages in Nixpkgs:

<screen>
$ nix-env -qa
aterm-2.2
bash-3.0
binutils-2.15
bison-1.875d
blackdown-1.4.2
bzip2-1.0.2
…</screen>

The flag <option>-q</option> specifies a query operation, and
<option>-a</option> means that you want to show the “available” (i.e.,
installable) packages, as opposed to the installed packages. If you
downloaded Nixpkgs yourself, or if you checked it out from GitHub,
then you need to pass the path to your Nixpkgs tree using the
<option>-f</option> flag:

<screen>
$ nix-env -qaf <replaceable>/path/to/nixpkgs</replaceable>
</screen>

where <replaceable>/path/to/nixpkgs</replaceable> is where you’ve
unpacked or checked out Nixpkgs.</para>

<para>You can select specific packages by name:

<screen>
$ nix-env -qa firefox
firefox-34.0.5
firefox-with-plugins-34.0.5
</screen>

and using regular expressions:

<screen>
$ nix-env -qa 'firefox.*'
</screen>

</para>

<para>It is also possible to see the <emphasis>status</emphasis> of
available packages, i.e., whether they are installed into the user
environment and/or present in the system:

<screen>
$ nix-env -qas
…
-PS bash-3.0
--S binutils-2.15
IPS bison-1.875d
…</screen>

The first character (<literal>I</literal>) indicates whether the
package is installed in your current user environment.  The second
(<literal>P</literal>) indicates whether it is present on your system
(in which case installing it into your user environment would be a
very quick operation).  The last one (<literal>S</literal>) indicates
whether there is a so-called <emphasis>substitute</emphasis> for the
package, which is Nix’s mechanism for doing binary deployment.  It
just means that Nix knows that it can fetch a pre-built package from
somewhere (typically a network server) instead of building it
locally.</para>

<para>You can install a package using <literal>nix-env -i</literal>.
For instance,

<screen>
$ nix-env -i subversion</screen>

will install the package called <literal>subversion</literal> (which
is, of course, the <link
xlink:href='http://subversion.tigris.org/'>Subversion version
management system</link>).</para>

<note><para>When you ask Nix to install a package, it will first try
to get it in pre-compiled form from a <emphasis>binary
cache</emphasis>. By default, Nix will use the binary cache
<uri>https://cache.nixos.org</uri>; it contains binaries for most
packages in Nixpkgs. Only if no binary is available in the binary
cache, Nix will build the package from source. So if <literal>nix-env
-i subversion</literal> results in Nix building stuff from source,
then either the package is not built for your platform by the Nixpkgs
build servers, or your version of Nixpkgs is too old or too new. For
instance, if you have a very recent checkout of Nixpkgs, then the
Nixpkgs build servers may not have had a chance to build everything
and upload the resulting binaries to
<uri>https://cache.nixos.org</uri>. The Nixpkgs channel is only
updated after all binaries have been uploaded to the cache, so if you
stick to the Nixpkgs channel (rather than using a Git checkout of the
Nixpkgs tree), you will get binaries for most packages.</para></note>

<para>Naturally, packages can also be uninstalled:

<screen>
$ nix-env -e subversion</screen>

</para>

<para>Upgrading to a new version is just as easy.  If you have a new
release of Nix Packages, you can do:

<screen>
$ nix-env -u subversion</screen>

This will <emphasis>only</emphasis> upgrade Subversion if there is a
“newer” version in the new set of Nix expressions, as
defined by some pretty arbitrary rules regarding ordering of version
numbers (which generally do what you’d expect of them).  To just
unconditionally replace Subversion with whatever version is in the Nix
expressions, use <parameter>-i</parameter> instead of
<parameter>-u</parameter>; <parameter>-i</parameter> will remove
whatever version is already installed.</para>

<para>You can also upgrade all packages for which there are newer
versions:

<screen>
$ nix-env -u</screen>

</para>

<para>Sometimes it’s useful to be able to ask what
<command>nix-env</command> would do, without actually doing it.  For
instance, to find out what packages would be upgraded by
<literal>nix-env -u</literal>, you can do

<screen>
$ nix-env -u --dry-run
(dry run; not doing anything)
upgrading `libxslt-1.1.0' to `libxslt-1.1.10'
upgrading `graphviz-1.10' to `graphviz-1.12'
upgrading `coreutils-5.0' to `coreutils-5.2.1'</screen>

</para>

</chapter>