Re: Adoption of Nix?
Sorry, I forgot to forward this to debian-devel.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Artyom Shalkhakov <artyom.shalkhakov@gmail.com>
Date: 2008/12/24
Subject: Re: Adoption of Nix?
To: "Eugene V. Lyubimkin" <jackyf.devel@gmail.com>
2008/12/24 Eugene V. Lyubimkin <jackyf.devel@gmail.com>:
> Which means that "find all dependencies with no exceptions" is not true.
This is how Nix developers put it:
> Runtime dependencies are found by scanning binaries for the hash parts
> of Nix store paths (such as r8vvq9kq…). This sounds risky, but it works
> extremely well.
(See <http://nixos.org/about.html>, section called "Complete dependencies".)
> If edited by administrator config file was deleted, then or it cannot be
> reverted, or it was not purged. Most other stuff can be reverted in theory...
> but again, Debian package maintainer scripts don't support downgrading (in
> general), and there are reasons for it.
Take another point of view: every Nix package exists in an ideal world where the
only packages it knows about are it's dependencies (and their precise versions).
> One big fact is: Debian have tens (or even hundreds) of tools that use apt
> infrastructure, including both user side and archive maintenance side. Nix, in
> any way it operates, suggests other API to maintain packages. Who is supposed
> to rewrite all this stuff for Nix?
You're probably right: nobody is going for a full rewrite. I guess I
should inspect
both Nix and dpkg more closely, and if I can find a one-to-one mapping between
the two, then we can go for an automatic migration.
> Yes, you are probably right: I don't understand how Nix may be useful for
> Debian (and for GNU/Linux also).
That's too bad for you. Shallow thinking doesn't get you anywhere.
Cheers,
Artyom Shalkhakov.
Reply to: