Wow my approach has been totally different. I think it's better at being declarative, but it doesn't allow getting user vs system packages from different sources so I have to pick between all stable or all unstable, or bother with the details of merging them.
I've got everything defined in a git repo full of .nix files with a submodule for my nixpkgs fork. When I want to add a package (or even just change one of my dotfiles) I edit the repo and do a nixos-rebuild. I think nix-env still references the official release-14.12 channel. Ideally I want it using my repo too, but since I barely use it there hasn't been a problem yet. Short of changing my setup in a big way, maybe I should try merging the unstable branch into mine periodically? If that gets messed up I can copy and paste specific packages instead. Also would setting some combination of NIXPKGS, NIXCFG, and NIX_PATH to point to my repos let me avoid channels altogether? Thanks for writing this up! The environment variables, channels_root etc. are still sort of black magic to me and it helps. Jeff On Mon, 9 Feb 2015 19:17:46 -0800 Michael Alyn Miller <[email protected]> wrote: > The 02/08/2015 12:21, Jeffrey David Johnson wrote: > > Nice! I'm currently binding "gksu 'i3lock -c000000 & > > pm-suspend'" to a hotkey using i3, but this is better. Is > > there a standard way to get it in my fork of nixpkgs, which is > > tracking the release-14.12 branch? (I could just copy and > > paste but if there's a better way now would be a good time to > > learn.) > > I certainly don't have an authoritative answer to this question, > but I'll tell you what I am doing and then maybe someone with > much more NixOS/Nixpkgs experience will chime in with > tweaks/guidance. > > In general I have the following goals for my NixOS system: > > 1. I want everything to be reproducible, which of course means that my > system is configured in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix, but also that > any packages that I install as an individual user are reproducible as > well. > 2. Related to the above, I only want to put "system" packages into > configuration.nix. My theory here is that most of my package > management is going to be done as a regular user, by creating > project-specific nix-shell environments, etc. Also, `nix-env -q` is > a nice way to see everything that is installed and it doesn't appear > that similar tools exist at the NixOS level. > > Goal #1 means that configuration.nix is pretty basic -- the bare minimum > number of packages to get my system working and launch an X environment > (the window manager, for example, but no apps). > > Goal #2 was more complex. I found the following two references on this > topic: > > - > <https://nixos.org/wiki/FAQ#How_can_I_manage_software_with_nix-env_like_with_configuration.nix.3F> > - <https://nixos.org/wiki/Howto_keep_multiple_packages_up_to_date_at_once> > > I went with the first option because I wanted to be able to use `nix-env > -q` to see what I had installed, regardless of how I did the install > (manually or through the "myPackageSelections.nix" file). I can provide > more details here if you like. > > With that choice out of the way, the next problem that I ran into was > getting access to newer packages. I have contributed a couple of > packages to Nixpkgs, fixed some others, etc. and so far I had just been > manually installing them out of my nixpkgs checkout. This was not > entirely compatible with my first goal, because now I had installed > packages that were not listed in my configuration. > > Enter the nixpkgs-unstable channel! That channel seems to be updated > pretty frequently and means that changes are available in binary form > within a few days. Thankfully my second goal meant that I already had a > perfect split between stable and unstable: my NixOS configuration could > stay on 14.12 and my user-level Nixpkgs was free to go unstable. > > Getting this working was relatively straightforward, although I had to > modify my environment in a couple of unexpected ways (more on this > later). > > The simple part is the `nix-channel --add > https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable` > and `nix-channel --update` as a normal user. Some things worked after > that, but not everything. `nix-env -i whatever` will happily use the > nixpkgs-unstable channel because it finds that channel in ~/.nix-defexpr. > Adding in the -f flag to specify your own expression means that nix-env > no longer knows about the channel though. Instead, nix-env falls back > to NIX_PATH, which by default points at the stable NixOS channel and > therefore has no idea that you want to use nixpkgs-unstable. > > I found that very confusing, although that's probably because of the > subtlety that is the myPackageSelections.nix-based way of managing my > package list. In any event, I had to dig through the docs to understand > the situation. > > I fixed this problem by setting NIX_PATH to > `nixpkgs=~/.nix-defexpr/channels/nixpkgs` > and removing the channels_root symlink from ~/nix-defexpr. That last > step probably isn't necessary, but every now and then nix-env would > complain about duplicate packages and besides that I don't want to get > (user) packages out of the stable NixOS channel anyway. > > This all seems to work pretty well and lets me have fast access to > new/changed packages without compiling everything myself. I am a bit > worried that changing NIX_PATH and removing channels_root is going to > cause me trouble one day, but so far everything seems fine. As I said, > I would welcome input here from the NixOS/Nixpkgs experts. > > I am curious to see what folks think about my installation approach as > well. I feel like this split between stable OS and unstable packages is > a good one and that declarative user-level package management is also > valuable. That said, NixOS doesn't support either one "out of the box" > so I am wondering if there is a better approach that I should be using. > > Hope that helps! > > Thanks, > Michael Alyn Miller > _______________________________________________ > nix-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev _______________________________________________ nix-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
