News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Persistent packages on Steam Deck using Nix. Parent comment

Re:Persistent packages on Steam Deck using Nix by IshKebab on Sunday February 09, 2025 @02:43PM (#42993135)
It's really 50 years of Unix's dumb practice of installing everything at absolute paths in `/usr` that has come home to roost. I wonder if Nix will finally make people write relocatable apps.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Persistent packages on Steam Deck using Nix by bronson on Sunday February 09, 2025 @09:55PM (#42996453)
The opposite. Everything must be in /nix.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Persistent packages on Steam Deck using Nix by otabdeveloper4 on Monday February 10, 2025 @01:39AM (#42997538)
No, each Nix app gets its own tree root. (Honestly the same thing Mac, Android, etc., also do, so not such a strange idea.)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Persistent packages on Steam Deck using Nix by IshKebab on Monday February 10, 2025 @02:03AM (#42997646)
It's designed like that because of this issue. They obviously don't want to do that, but if they don't install everything in global absolute paths then too much badly written software breaks.

It's a symptom, not a cause.

[ Parent | on HN ]