Valentin Gagarin 2af9fd20c6 clarify definition of "installable"

the term was hard to discover, as its definition and explanation were in
a very long document lacking an overview section.
search did not help because it occurs so often.

- clarify wording in the definition
- add an overview of installable types
- add "installable" to glossary
- link to definition from occurrences of the term
- be more precise about where store derivation outputs are processed
- installable Nix expressions must evaluate to a derivation

Co-authored-by: Adam Joseph <54836058+amjoseph-nixpkgs@users.noreply.github.com>

2023-03-05 01:46:17 +01:00

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Examples

Run the default app from the blender-bin flake:
```
# nix run blender-bin
```
Run a non-default app from the blender-bin flake:
```
# nix run blender-bin#blender_2_83
```
Tip: you can find apps provided by this flake by running nix flake show blender-bin.
Run vim from the nixpkgs flake:
```
# nix run nixpkgs#vim
```
Note that vim (as of the time of writing of this page) is not an app but a package. Thus, Nix runs the eponymous file from the vim package.
Run vim with arguments:
```
# nix run nixpkgs#vim -- --help
```

Description

nix run builds and runs installable, which must evaluate to an app or a regular Nix derivation.

If installable evaluates to an app (see below), it executes the program specified by the app definition.

If installable evaluates to a derivation, it will try to execute the program <out>/bin/<name>, where out is the primary output store path of the derivation, and name is the first of the following that exists:

The meta.mainProgram attribute of the derivation.
The pname attribute of the derivation.
The name part of the value of the name attribute of the derivation.

For instance, if name is set to hello-1.10, nix run will run $out/bin/hello.

Flake output attributes

If no flake output attribute is given, nix run tries the following flake output attributes:

apps.<system>.default
packages.<system>.default

If an attribute name is given, nix run tries the following flake output attributes:

apps.<system>.<name>
packages.<system>.<name>
legacyPackages.<system>.<name>

Apps

An app is specified by a flake output attribute named apps.<system>.<name>. It looks like this:

apps.x86_64-linux.blender_2_79 = {
  type = "app";
  program = "${self.packages.x86_64-linux.blender_2_79}/bin/blender";
};

The only supported attributes are:

type (required): Must be set to app.
program (required): The full path of the executable to run. It must reside in the Nix store.

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Examples

Description

Flake output attributes

Apps

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