Re:What is Nix and why you should try it
by wmertens on Monday October 16, 2017 @12:48AM
(#15480893)
Cool! Indeed, Rez does something similar on the package management side.
For Nix, this is almost a side-effect, however. Nix's primary task is to describe how to build packages, and the entire OS is just another package that groups all dependencies. You can make a single change to a file everything depends on and it will result in a new OS.
Nix can evaluate the entire system configuration in seconds, and build or download missing binaries in parallel.
As a result you can e.g. have a complete OS based on a different glibc (maybe with some patch you like) installed and running alongside the normal OS without the glibc patch. Packages that do not use glibc are simply shared.
For Nix, this is almost a side-effect, however. Nix's primary task is to describe how to build packages, and the entire OS is just another package that groups all dependencies. You can make a single change to a file everything depends on and it will result in a new OS.
Nix can evaluate the entire system configuration in seconds, and build or download missing binaries in parallel.
As a result you can e.g. have a complete OS based on a different glibc (maybe with some patch you like) installed and running alongside the normal OS without the glibc patch. Packages that do not use glibc are simply shared.