Nix/NixOS

Transcript

1. NIX/NIXOS ILUGC Sibi Prabakaran Jan 8, 2022
3. AGENDA My experience with Nix/NixOS Introduction Why Nix
4. MY EXPERIENCE Tried NixOS around 5 years ago Initially used nixpkgs in Ubuntu For around ~1.5 years Using NixOS for ~ 1 year Maintainer of various packages
5. NIX/NIXPKGS/NIXOS Nix: Pure, lazy functional language. Not a general purpose language! Used for package description, composition Nixpkgs: Collection of packages. NixOS: Linux + nixpkgs System configuration also managed via Nix
6. WHY NIX/NIXOS Reproducibility bit identical Multiple versions of a software Atomic upgrades and rollbacks Declarative
7. BASIC WORKFLOW configuration.nix home manager writing script Usage is pretty similar to other distros.
8. NIX LANGUAGE Lazy, Functional and Pure Functions, Sets, Lists etc. Reference: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix_Expression_Language
9. NIX EXPRESSION Code written in Nix language ❯ nix-instantiate --eval --expr "2 + 2" 4 ❯ cat example.nix 2 + 2 ❯ nix-instantiate --eval example.nix 4
10. REAL WORLD NIX CODE Package: systemd service: amber cnx
11. NIX DERIVATIONS Recipe to build the end product. Reproducible & Deterministic ❯ fd -e drv nix /nix/store | head -n 5 /nix/store/ix9j7fmxpfp7c0b2rn95wyy5y1803mya-nixos- manual.desktop.drv /nix/store/2a6ylyfsxb8knnana40fbnmk8ka7q1na-etc- nixos.conf.drv /nix/store/6r57mn57p9rgijr0lsfihkdkk2djkv86-nixos- manpages.drv /nix/store/ppsdnzviyi9q2xqak9qk0w16hpj30frj-nixos.conf.drv /nix/store/bp7flklzjxhm966b0d0pxi85dg4zbqpa-nix-prefetch- cvs.drv
12. DERVIATION.. ❯ nix show-derivation derivation
13. COMMUNITY 80,000 packages Easy to add package as compared to other distributions Images available for cloud providers nix-community organization
14. DISADVANTAGES No secure boot. Nix specific issues! Learning curve Debugging experience Size of user community Things are still changing: Flakes!
15. QUESTIONS