[Nix-dev] Remove packages

[Eelco Dolstra]

Hi,

On 18-mei-05, at 13:18, olivier wrote:

> I would like to know if there is some way to remove packages in 
> /nix/store. If the build fails, it will not be rebuilt. It is not 
> practical if this is a nix configuration error, and not a package 
> error (a rm -rf doesn't clean the database).
>
> I only know nix-store --gc, but it takes too much time to re-download 
> and re-build all packages.

There is no direct way; packages are only deleted through the garbage 
collector.  To prevent things from being re-downloaded/rebuilt, you 
should register them as garbage collector roots.  Nix-env and nix-build 
do this automatically, and so do the build farm scripts if I'm not 
mistaken.

However, by default registering a root only prevents the build results 
(the derivation outputs) from being GC'ed, not the sources or any 
build-time-only dependencies.  To prevent those from being deleted, you 
should set the options `gc-keep-outputs' and `gc-keep-derivations' to 
`true' in /nix/etc/nix/nix.conf.

-- 
Eelco Dolstra | http://www.cs.uu.nl/~eelco