[Nix-dev] firefox^2

[Eelco Visser]

> Try to install from populate-cache.nix, not i686-linux.nix, e.g.,
> 
> $ nix-env -f .../pkgs/system/populate-cache.nix -i firefox

Right. That works fine. 

My recent experience with nix-env is that I'm continuously switching
between versions of nix expressions representing nixpkgs. Now to
disambiguate, I need to use populate-cache.nix. To install something
that is not in the cache (e.g. hevea) I need to use i686-linux.nix since
it is not represented in the packages in the channel. So the caching
mechanism does not really work as a mere optimization of source
distribution; if something is not in the cache it also not available
in the channel. Another problem I frequently run into in those
situations is that when I do try to build from source, it turns out
the tarball has vanished from the producer site. This all amounts
in a less than smooth nix experience for me.

- there needs to be a way to distinghuish between elements in the
  list of packages

- the nixpkgs channel should make available all packages in its
  top-level (all-packages) even those for which no binary 
  installation is pre-computed;

- what it *should* always cache is all the source distributions so
  that a source build at least works.

-- Eelco 

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Eelco Visser            Institute of Information and Computing Sciences
mail:visser at cs.uu.nl    Universiteit Utrecht
  or:visser at acm.org     P.O. Box 80089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands
http://www.cs.uu.nl/~visser/ Phone: +31-30-253 4592 Fax: +31-30-251 3791
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