Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Roger Qiu]

When I exported a docker image to take look at what it is, it was also just
a compressed set of tar'ed file trees.
On 08/02/2017 7:46 AM, "Arnold Krille"  wrote:

> On Mon, 6 Feb 2017 18:33:19 -0600 Matthew Bauer 
> wrote:
> > GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
> >
> > I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on. I'm
> > calling it "nix-bundle".
> >
> > Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
> > tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
> > final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
> > tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
> > execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
> > will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All of
> > this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with a
> > valid executable.
> >
> > For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:
> >
> > ./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello
> >
> > "hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
> > ${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
> > called "hello".
> >
> > The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
> > external dependencies are needed because they are all contained within
> > the Nix closure.
>
> So instead of pushing docker images around to bring an app into
> non-nix-production, we can just push around a tar'ed nix tree? Nice.
>
> - Arnold
>
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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Arnold Krille]

On Mon, 6 Feb 2017 18:33:19 -0600 Matthew Bauer 
wrote:
> GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
> 
> I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on. I'm
> calling it "nix-bundle".
> 
> Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
> tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
> final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
> tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
> execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
> will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All of
> this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with a
> valid executable.
> 
> For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:
> 
> ./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello
> 
> "hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
> ${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
> called "hello".
> 
> The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
> external dependencies are needed because they are all contained within
> the Nix closure.

So instead of pushing docker images around to bring an app into
non-nix-production, we can just push around a tar'ed nix tree? Nice.

- Arnold


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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Matthew Bauer]

> Any chance this could be combined with lethalman's work on turning
> derivations into docker containers?

Do you have a link to this project? All I can find is this blog post:
http://lethalman.blogspot.com/2016/04/cheap-docker-images-with-nix_15.html

We can get most of the advantages of the container features of Docker
using just cgroups/namespaces. The main advantage of using Docker is
that lots of different systems support it. The Open Container standard
might be an easier way to go: it's just a folder with a /config.json
file:
https://github.com/opencontainers/runtime-spec

On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 8:32 AM, Peter Hoeg  wrote:
> Nice work Matthew!
>
>>> I would vote for mirroring this tool in nixos github namespace (or even
>>> trying to make this project official one) as it can have big impact of
>>> propagating/implementing nix ideas into environments where it's not
>>> straight forward to use it.
>
>
> Any chance this could be combined with lethalman's work on turning
> derivations into docker containers? There seems to be a fair amount of
> overlap and having a generic mechanism to create a runable closure means
> we could relatively easily support the containerization mechanism and/or
> application distribution format of the day.
>
> --
> Regards,
> Peter
>
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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Matthew Bauer]

> One question: Will it create a persistent /nix directory on the machine
> the generated binary is running?

No, it just creates a temporary chroot in /tmp and bind mounts the
/nix/ there. As a side effect, though, you will not have access to
your regular /nix/ directory within the bundle (which is probably good
for purity reasons).
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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Peter Hoeg]

Nice work Matthew!


I would vote for mirroring this tool in nixos github namespace (or even
trying to make this project official one) as it can have big impact of
propagating/implementing nix ideas into environments where it's not
straight forward to use it.


Any chance this could be combined with lethalman's work on turning
derivations into docker containers? There seems to be a fair amount of
overlap and having a generic mechanism to create a runable closure means
we could relatively easily support the containerization mechanism and/or
application distribution format of the day.

--
Regards,
Peter
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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Profpatsch]

On 17-02-07 11:48am, Tomasz Czyż wrote:
> I would vote for mirroring this tool in nixos github namespace (or even
> trying to make this project official one) as it can have big impact of
> propagating/implementing nix ideas into environments where it's not
> straight forward to use it.
> 
> What do you think people?

+1


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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Maarten Hoogendoorn]

It could also be used to implement an offline NixOS installer. I guess it
needs to run as root given that you're setting up a chroot env?

Op 7 feb. 2017 12:50 p.m. schreef "Shea Levy" :

+1! This is really cool.
Tomasz Czyż  writes:

> I would vote for mirroring this tool in nixos github namespace (or even
> trying to make this project official one) as it can have big impact of
> propagating/implementing nix ideas into environments where it's not
> straight forward to use it.
>
> What do you think people?
>
> 2017-02-07 11:31 GMT+00:00 Tomasz Czyż :
>
>> Matthew,
>> very good tool, thank you for sharing.
>>
>> 2017-02-07 10:32 GMT+00:00 Domen Kožar :
>>
>>> Awesome! I will need this very soon, good timing :)
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Moritz Ulrich 
>>> wrote:
>>>

 Hey Matthew,

 This sounds great! I'll give it a try :-)

 One question: Will it create a persistent /nix directory on the machine
 the generated binary is running?

 Cheers
 Moritz

 Matthew Bauer  writes:

 > GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
 >
 > I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on.
I'm
 > calling it "nix-bundle".
 >
 > Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
 > tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
 > final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
 > tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
 > execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
 > will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All
of
 > this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with
a
 > valid executable.
 >
 > For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:
 >
 > ./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello
 >
 > "hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
 > ${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
 > called "hello".
 >p
 > The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
 > external dependencies are needed because they are all contained
within
 > the Nix closure.
 >
 > There are two main drawbacks: slow startup and large file size.
 > Extracting the tarball takes time and this adds on to startup times.
 > Also, because everything is included from the Nix closure,
complicated
 > apps tend to be much larger because of the dependency tree.
 >
 > I've been experimenting with using AppImage as a format to package
 > them in, but it is not currently ready yet.
 > ___
 > nix-dev mailing list
 > nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
 > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

 --

 ___
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>>>
>>> ___
>>> nix-dev mailing list
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>>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tomasz Czyż
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Tomasz Czyż
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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Shea Levy]

+1! This is really cool.
Tomasz Czyż  writes:

> I would vote for mirroring this tool in nixos github namespace (or even
> trying to make this project official one) as it can have big impact of
> propagating/implementing nix ideas into environments where it's not
> straight forward to use it.
>
> What do you think people?
>
> 2017-02-07 11:31 GMT+00:00 Tomasz Czyż :
>
>> Matthew,
>> very good tool, thank you for sharing.
>>
>> 2017-02-07 10:32 GMT+00:00 Domen Kožar :
>>
>>> Awesome! I will need this very soon, good timing :)
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Moritz Ulrich 
>>> wrote:
>>>

 Hey Matthew,

 This sounds great! I'll give it a try :-)

 One question: Will it create a persistent /nix directory on the machine
 the generated binary is running?

 Cheers
 Moritz

 Matthew Bauer  writes:

 > GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
 >
 > I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on. I'm
 > calling it "nix-bundle".
 >
 > Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
 > tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
 > final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
 > tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
 > execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
 > will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All of
 > this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with a
 > valid executable.
 >
 > For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:
 >
 > ./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello
 >
 > "hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
 > ${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
 > called "hello".
 >p
 > The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
 > external dependencies are needed because they are all contained within
 > the Nix closure.
 >
 > There are two main drawbacks: slow startup and large file size.
 > Extracting the tarball takes time and this adds on to startup times.
 > Also, because everything is included from the Nix closure, complicated
 > apps tend to be much larger because of the dependency tree.
 >
 > I've been experimenting with using AppImage as a format to package
 > them in, but it is not currently ready yet.
 > ___
 > nix-dev mailing list
 > nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
 > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

 --

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>>>
>>> ___
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tomasz Czyż
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Tomasz Czyż
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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Tomasz Czyż]

I would vote for mirroring this tool in nixos github namespace (or even
trying to make this project official one) as it can have big impact of
propagating/implementing nix ideas into environments where it's not
straight forward to use it.

What do you think people?

2017-02-07 11:31 GMT+00:00 Tomasz Czyż :

> Matthew,
> very good tool, thank you for sharing.
>
> 2017-02-07 10:32 GMT+00:00 Domen Kožar :
>
>> Awesome! I will need this very soon, good timing :)
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Moritz Ulrich 
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hey Matthew,
>>>
>>> This sounds great! I'll give it a try :-)
>>>
>>> One question: Will it create a persistent /nix directory on the machine
>>> the generated binary is running?
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Moritz
>>>
>>> Matthew Bauer  writes:
>>>
>>> > GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
>>> >
>>> > I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on. I'm
>>> > calling it "nix-bundle".
>>> >
>>> > Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
>>> > tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
>>> > final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
>>> > tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
>>> > execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
>>> > will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All of
>>> > this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with a
>>> > valid executable.
>>> >
>>> > For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:
>>> >
>>> > ./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello
>>> >
>>> > "hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
>>> > ${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
>>> > called "hello".
>>> >p
>>> > The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
>>> > external dependencies are needed because they are all contained within
>>> > the Nix closure.
>>> >
>>> > There are two main drawbacks: slow startup and large file size.
>>> > Extracting the tarball takes time and this adds on to startup times.
>>> > Also, because everything is included from the Nix closure, complicated
>>> > apps tend to be much larger because of the dependency tree.
>>> >
>>> > I've been experimenting with using AppImage as a format to package
>>> > them in, but it is not currently ready yet.
>>> > ___
>>> > nix-dev mailing list
>>> > nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
>>> > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> ___
>>> nix-dev mailing list
>>> nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
>>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>>>
>>>
>>
>> ___
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Tomasz Czyż
>



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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Tomasz Czyż]

Matthew,
very good tool, thank you for sharing.

2017-02-07 10:32 GMT+00:00 Domen Kožar :

> Awesome! I will need this very soon, good timing :)
>
> On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Moritz Ulrich 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hey Matthew,
>>
>> This sounds great! I'll give it a try :-)
>>
>> One question: Will it create a persistent /nix directory on the machine
>> the generated binary is running?
>>
>> Cheers
>> Moritz
>>
>> Matthew Bauer  writes:
>>
>> > GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
>> >
>> > I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on. I'm
>> > calling it "nix-bundle".
>> >
>> > Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
>> > tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
>> > final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
>> > tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
>> > execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
>> > will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All of
>> > this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with a
>> > valid executable.
>> >
>> > For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:
>> >
>> > ./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello
>> >
>> > "hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
>> > ${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
>> > called "hello".
>> >p
>> > The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
>> > external dependencies are needed because they are all contained within
>> > the Nix closure.
>> >
>> > There are two main drawbacks: slow startup and large file size.
>> > Extracting the tarball takes time and this adds on to startup times.
>> > Also, because everything is included from the Nix closure, complicated
>> > apps tend to be much larger because of the dependency tree.
>> >
>> > I've been experimenting with using AppImage as a format to package
>> > them in, but it is not currently ready yet.
>> > ___
>> > nix-dev mailing list
>> > nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
>> > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>>
>> --
>>
>> ___
>> nix-dev mailing list
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>>
>>
>
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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Domen Kožar]

Awesome! I will need this very soon, good timing :)

On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Moritz Ulrich  wrote:

>
> Hey Matthew,
>
> This sounds great! I'll give it a try :-)
>
> One question: Will it create a persistent /nix directory on the machine
> the generated binary is running?
>
> Cheers
> Moritz
>
> Matthew Bauer  writes:
>
> > GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
> >
> > I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on. I'm
> > calling it "nix-bundle".
> >
> > Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
> > tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
> > final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
> > tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
> > execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
> > will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All of
> > this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with a
> > valid executable.
> >
> > For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:
> >
> > ./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello
> >
> > "hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
> > ${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
> > called "hello".
> >p
> > The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
> > external dependencies are needed because they are all contained within
> > the Nix closure.
> >
> > There are two main drawbacks: slow startup and large file size.
> > Extracting the tarball takes time and this adds on to startup times.
> > Also, because everything is included from the Nix closure, complicated
> > apps tend to be much larger because of the dependency tree.
> >
> > I've been experimenting with using AppImage as a format to package
> > them in, but it is not currently ready yet.
> > ___
> > nix-dev mailing list
> > nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
> > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>
> --
>
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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Moritz Ulrich]

Hey Matthew,

This sounds great! I'll give it a try :-)

One question: Will it create a persistent /nix directory on the machine
the generated binary is running? 

Cheers
Moritz

Matthew Bauer  writes:

> GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
>
> I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on. I'm
> calling it "nix-bundle".
>
> Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
> tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
> final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
> tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
> execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
> will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All of
> this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with a
> valid executable.
>
> For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:
>
> ./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello
>
> "hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
> ${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
> called "hello".
>p
> The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
> external dependencies are needed because they are all contained within
> the Nix closure.
>
> There are two main drawbacks: slow startup and large file size.
> Extracting the tarball takes time and this adds on to startup times.
> Also, because everything is included from the Nix closure, complicated
> apps tend to be much larger because of the dependency tree.
>
> I've been experimenting with using AppImage as a format to package
> them in, but it is not currently ready yet.
> ___
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> nix-dev@lists.science.uu.nl
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

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Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Graham Christensen]

This is very neat! Thank you for sharing!

Graham
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[Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Matthew Bauer]

GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle

I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on. I'm
calling it "nix-bundle".

Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All of
this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with a
valid executable.

For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:

./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello

"hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
called "hello".

The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
external dependencies are needed because they are all contained within
the Nix closure.

There are two main drawbacks: slow startup and large file size.
Extracting the tarball takes time and this adds on to startup times.
Also, because everything is included from the Nix closure, complicated
apps tend to be much larger because of the dependency tree.

I've been experimenting with using AppImage as a format to package
them in, but it is not currently ready yet.
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