[Nix-dev] Using nix under debian stable

[Benjamin Franksen]

Hi All

Apologies if the things I am asking are off-topic for this list. I know of
no other nix-related mailing list, but I am open to suggestions where to
better post my questions.

I am trying to evaluate using nix as deployment system on top of debian
gnu/linux for software we write for in-house use. Unfortunately I cannot
use /nix as the nix store path because I don't have root permissions on the
relevant machine(s). I could get our admin to create me a symlink /nix to
somewhere but giving me a 'real' directory (which probably means a
dedicated partition) would require lots of arguing. So that means I cannot
use pre-built binaries which makes things a bit slow... Since this is a
test/evaluation system only, wouldn't it make sense to relax the strict
no-symlink policy in such cases? It would be ideal if I could configure
this somewhere when building nix from source. I am willing to patch the nix
sources if someone could give me a hint where this check is implemented.

Another question w.r.t. to the nixpkgs (I am using the the current version
form the svn repo): I noticed that the first time I 'nix-env -i
some-package' nix downloads and installs linux kernel headers. Now, what it
installs is version 2.6.23.16, but the kernel my stuff will run under is
2.6.18. I am not sure but I think this is potentially unsafe; hence I have
changed my nix expression to use the same kernel version as I have in my
host system. This doesn't make a great difference to me at the moment
because I have to compile everything from source anyway (see above) but it
could make one in the future so I am asking for your opinion on this.

Yet another thought that occurred to me is: what if I forget about nixpkgs
and use nix /only/ for our own stuff. Can I write my own nix expression and
import the OS stuff (compiler tool chain, headers, etc) from outside of the
nix store? This would be very 'impure' of course, and would limit
reproducability on other machines, but it might be easier to start
experimenting with. Any opinions, warnings, hints?

Cheers
Ben