On 5/13/07, Tracy R Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
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Todd Walton wrote:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but this sounds very much like Gentoo. You
> write a build script (an "expression" in NixOS) to tell it how to
> modify the filesystem to achieve the end result desired. The idea
> being that everything about your system can be described by the
> expression that made it so? Hmm...
Sort of...except NixOS takes everything else installed into account. The
"expression" in NixOS is purely functional which means that given the
same inputs it will always produce the same output. So you can always
track exactly the state of the data on the hard drive.
> So... what's the difference between, say, /bin/mkdir and
> /nix/store/mkdir? I mean, you store it in one place or you store it
> in the other.
/bin/mkdir is a symlink to /nix/store/mkdir. But it will actually be a
symlink to /nix/store/<md5sum>/mkdir or something like that. They use
md5 sums a lot. Read the paper linked to on the nixos site for the real
scoop on how this all works. It is a guaranteed way to prevent
dependency hell and a way to track exactly what is installed on your
system and avoid missing any dependencies. Great for those who are
really anal about deploying the exact same thing everywhere in their
production environment.
- --
Tracy R Reed
OK, I have read (at, i.e. not in depth) several of the papers by
Eelco Dolstra, the key inventor of Nix. I think this guy is on to
something important. Has anyone played with the distro yet.
BobLQ "Eager to get out of dependency hell"
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