[Nix-dev] Re: [Zero-install-devel] Nix

[Thomas Leonard]

On 4/1/07, Eric Wasylishen <ericwa at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> I just came across this today, and it sounds pretty cool, with many of
> the same features as Zeroinstall.
> http://nix.cs.uu.nl/about.html

I've added a link on the Links page, with a short comparison:

  http://0install.net/links.html

I only had a short look, so it might be a bit inaccurate. I've CC'd
the Nix list so they can complain if so ;-)

Hopefully they'll link to us too.

> There's even a PhD thesis about it, in which they meition Zeroinstall,
> but only the older kernel module version.

That's a bit of a shame, as in many ways it's closer to the injector.

I read the manual, but a few things weren't clear:

- Can users share packages safely? The manual says "A setuid
installation should only by used if the users in the Nix group are
mutually trusted, since any user in that group has the ability to
change anything in the Nix store", which sounds like a "No".

- How are channels secured? I had a look at a MANIFEST file, but
didn't see any kind of signature. I was never prompted about keys,
etc.

- Are packages namespaced? Dependencies seem to have short names (like
"perl"). Presumably there's a central authority that assigns names?

They seem to have a working garbage collector. We need one of these ;-)

> It seems like the main difference between it and Zeroinstall is that
> it's designed to manage the entire distribution, and as well has some
> other things like configuration managment.


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard		http://rox.sourceforge.net
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