forked from lix-project/lix
43 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
43 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
|
# Channels
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
If you want to stay up to date with a set of packages, it’s not very
|
|||
|
|
convenient to manually download the latest set of Nix expressions for
|
|||
|
|
those packages and upgrade using `nix-env`. Fortunately, there’s a
|
|||
|
|
better way: *Nix channels*.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
A Nix channel is just a URL that points to a place that contains a set
|
|||
|
|
of Nix expressions and a manifest. Using the command
|
|||
|
|
[`nix-channel`](#sec-nix-channel) you can automatically stay up to date
|
|||
|
|
with whatever is available at that URL.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
To see the list of official NixOS channels, visit
|
|||
|
|
<https://nixos.org/channels>.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
You can “subscribe” to a channel using `nix-channel --add`, e.g.,
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
$ nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
subscribes you to a channel that always contains that latest version of
|
|||
|
|
the Nix Packages collection. (Subscribing really just means that the URL
|
|||
|
|
is added to the file `~/.nix-channels`, where it is read by subsequent
|
|||
|
|
calls to `nix-channel
|
|||
|
|
--update`.) You can “unsubscribe” using `nix-channel
|
|||
|
|
--remove`:
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
$ nix-channel --remove nixpkgs
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
To obtain the latest Nix expressions available in a channel, do
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
$ nix-channel --update
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
This downloads and unpacks the Nix expressions in every channel
|
|||
|
|
(downloaded from `url/nixexprs.tar.bz2`). It also makes the union of
|
|||
|
|
each channel’s Nix expressions available by default to `nix-env`
|
|||
|
|
operations (via the symlink `~/.nix-defexpr/channels`). Consequently,
|
|||
|
|
you can then say
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
$ nix-env -u
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
to upgrade all packages in your profile to the latest versions available
|
|||
|
|
in the subscribed channels.
|