What does NixOS Package Manager do?
Most package managers use a file that contains the executable or source code. They then calculate what it needs on the system and then make sure that it exists. In Nix, things work very similarly. The big difference is that Nix creates all the files, and compiles them if necessary, then put them in one place; the nix-store. The first question you have may be, “Will the files not have the same name?” The system avoids this by having one directory for each version AND naming all files with a hash. To make the application “feel at home”, all dependencies are then linked to their correct directories using ordinary symlinks. A profile keeps track of which version each user runs.
NixOS User Installs
With this system, you can have different versions installed in each user’s directory. If they are the same in several users, the administrator can let Nix re-link binaries, so only one exists at a time. This is useful in saving disk space. You can also create specific environments for each version of the package. This is especially useful when you want to test a new version or develop software.
Installing for common distribution
For most common platforms, you can install Nix, the package manager with a simple script. This script is available on the Nix website. The script will need root user access, but if you are very security conscious, you should read the script before you use it. If you want to avoid using root in the script, just create the /nix directory on your system.
If you have no root access or just super cautious, you can have Nix as a user only package manager.
This binary works well for most, if not all, distributions. Platforms are x8664, i?86, aarch64, and x8664-darwin, which cover almost all platforms available. If you use any other platforms, you can probably use the source code and build your own. When the installation is done, you will then have a bunch of new commands.
Adding your first program to NixOS
To install software and set when it can be used, you have nix-env. The install option (-i) is the most common one since you use it always and put a package as an argument.
This looks the same as in other distributions, so does the query argument. The install will take some time, though. The reason is that it must compile the software unless there is a pre-compiled version in the Nix Cache. Reaching the cache is not always very fast either. There is a difference that you should take note of; you can pick a version! If you want a special version, you must find which are available using regular expressions.
You will receive a list of all the available packages. You can install it the same way but using the value in the list.
This can fail if you already have an installed version. Option ‘–preserve-installed’ will not erase the installed version. You may end up with two versions of the same priority, which you can fix by setting the priority.
Now, you will run the old version the next time you start Firefox. To switch which one you run, you can set the priority accordingly. You can also start a shell to choose a binary. This is a developer’s option, and the command is nix-shell.
Updating NixOS
Once you have a collection of software, you want to stay updated. Same as always, you use the same command with an argument. But you must also keep the channel updated. The command is nix-channel.
This reads down the current versions of all packages available. After that, you can start upgrading your software with nix-env.
An upgrade like this will upgrade your old version of the software. In this case, the old Firefox will be replaced with the newest version. You may not want this for whatever reason, usually development.
Removing applications from NixOS
Removing applications is equally simple, with a small caveat. No applications are removed by a remove command.
This command will remove the links to the current build of this version of Firefox. All the files will always stay on disk. You have these versions available to do a rollback. A rollback means that you go back to using the old version. This can be useful if you have tried the newest and it has unforeseen problems.
You rollback an entire generation, which means all the programs that were upgraded since the last generation. The option runs two commands; that list and then switches to that old generations. All installed packages exist in a generation on disk.
NixOS Roll-back and Cleaning up
The rollback function will lead to a lot of disk space being used by old versions. You can clean this up (you need to clean this up!). When you have had a long enough period, at your own choice, you can also clean up these old generations to save disk space.
With this command, you delete all generations except the two last ones. You can go back and forth in the list with more complex parameters to leave the specific generation that worked best for you. Unless you have many testing or development projects that need many versions for testing, you should use a scheduled removal of all old generations.
A simple script to keep your generations clean comes with a Nix package manager install.
You should also set up the collector to run automatically using systemd or other systems.
Conclusion
Nix package manager is a powerful system that can get you running complex development environments on your machine. You can also use it to keep your software tidy and have a simple way to recover on a new machine, should the catastrophe of a disk crash occur.
