[Nix-dev] Re: Suggestion: Home configuration.

[Nicolas Pierron]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 09:25, Ludovic Courtès <ludo at gnu.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> "Nicolas Pierron"
> <nicolas.b.pierron at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Recently I have installed wmii which provide a script in its /etc but
>> this script is suppose to be run-able and was not able to start due to
>> a missing runtime-denpendency.  First I thought that the /etc files
>> were not installed and that the program relies entirely on the user
>> configuration.
>
> And?

And I have asked the help of Marc Weber to give me an hint, which
should not occur in the futur because we do not want to provide
support for each package contain in Nixpkgs.

>> However, it could be interesting that each package that your are
>> installing provides scripts to set your environment variables instead
>> of creating a script which tries to do everything.
>
> Which environment variables and which scripts are you referring to?
> (Sorry if I'm missing the obvious but I really don't get it.)

All environment variables: ACLOCAL, PKG_CONFIG, PERLLIB, ...
The script "/etc/profile" is growing each times somebody find a
missing environment variable (by the way PERLLIB is not set). I think
this should be done for each package. A derivation can create a
"profile" script which would be merge in the user environment.

>> Apache is configured inside NixOs by using nix expressions.  My
>> question is, is it possible to move this configuration to NixPkgs and
>> override the apache default configuration with the same script? Or is
>> it really necessary to separate the configuration of the package from
>> the package ?  My point of view is that a configuration is only a
>> "configuration package" which depends on the tools that are used
>> inside the configuration and which override the default configuration
>> of used packages.
>
> But the Apache service in NixOS uses an Upstart job, a group/user ID,
> etc., all of which are resources under the admin's control.  Conversely,
> "regular" packages (such as the Apache package proper in Nixpkgs) do not
> use any resource not available to non-root users.

Nixpkgs can be used without NixOs on other systems ... and
administrator can install Apache through Nix instead of there default
system.

-- 
Nicolas Pierron
- If you are doing something twice then you should try to do it once.
- Do not print documents, save your printer ;)