NIX Package Manager:
This section gives overview of NIX package manager, and some basic commands for operations.
Introduction:
NIX is a functional package manager for UNIX like systems. similar to apt-get(debian model), rpm(fedora model). But this one is linux flavor agnostic. I mean, you can use it in debian, redhat etc.
Its reliable and reproducible. It provides atomic upgrades and rollbacks, side-by-side installation of multiple versions of a package, multi-user package management and easy setup of build environments.
How to Install
$ curl https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh
Once you installed, by default the global nix channel(https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable\ is added. so that you can install available packages and start use it.
Simillar to apt-get install from the public apt repository.
How to uninstall nix
rm -rf /nix
rm -rf $HOME/{.nix-channels,.nix-defexpr,.nix-profile,.config/nixpkgs}
remove the . "$HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh" line in your ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile
Ref: https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/1402
To list the available packages for installation:
nix-env -qa
To install the package:
nix-env -i <package name>
It installs the package in /nix/store and create the symbolic links of the binary in your path.
cloud@cibuild:~$ nix-env -i hello
replacing old ‘hello-2.10’
installing ‘hello-2.10’
cloud@cibuild:~$ which hello
/home/cloud/.nix-profile/bin/hello
cloud@cibuild:~$ ls -lrt /home/cloud/.nix-profile/bin/hello
lrwxrwxrwx 1 cloud cloud 64 Jan 1 1970 /home/cloud/.nix-profile/bin/hello -> /nix/store/d8rcprx833qxrgyazr2w8qhs6rq7wmj4-hello-2.10/bin/hello
cloud@cibuild:~$
To uninsall the package:
nix-env -e <package name>
Garbage collection (clean up)
nix-collect-garbage -d
NIX Channels:
To list the configured channels:
cloud@cibuild:~$ nix-channel --list
nixpkgs https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable
cloud@cibuild:~$
Update the packages information:
nix-channel --update
Add a new channel:
nix-channel --add <channel url> [name]
Ex:
nix-channel --add http://84.39.63.212/jobset/opencontrail/trunk/channel/latest contrail
Here contrail represents the name of this channlel. if we omits the name, the last part of the URL will be taken as name.
Remove a channel
nix-channel --remove <name>
Ex:
cloud@cibuild:~$ nix-channel --remove contrail
uninstalling ‘contrail’
building path(s) ‘/nix/store/64lk7y97ihxas5zybj4nfiik6iw2w9fa-user-environment’
created 5 symlinks in user environment
cloud@cibuild:~$
To list all the packages available :
nix-env -qa
To find the particular package with regular exp
nix-env -qa firefox
nix-env -qa firefox.*
To know the status of the package
nix-env -qas firefox.*
Example output:
--S firefox-57.0
I - Installed (first char)
P - Package available in your system(can be easily installed)
S - substitute . binary pacakge is available in the public internet. which can be download and installed.
Reference link: