[Nix-dev] How to stop nix-collect-garbage from expiring source code tarballs?

[Eelco Dolstra]

Hi,

Peter Simons wrote:

> I usually set "gc-keep-outputs = true" in ~/.nix-profile/etc/nix/nix.conf to
> keep nix-collect-garbage from expiring build-time dependencies. I do that,
> because prefer to keep downloaded source tarballs around in /nix/store. This
> always worked fine, but after updating Nix 0.14pre18861 recently, source
> tarballs appear to be garbage collected anyway.
> 
> Has the behavior of Nix changed in that regard? Or am I doing something wrong?

I did make some changes to the garbage collector, but I can't reproduce this:

[root at dutibo:~]# nix-build -A aterm25.src
(downloads the aterm-2.5 tarball)

[root at dutibo:~]# nix-build -A aterm25
(builds aterm-2.5)

[root at dutibo:~]# nix-store --delete
/nix/store/rxryn23w373b8vjqqbgnp2lp8gcrjd3g-aterm-2.5.tar.gz --option
gc-keep-outputs true
finding garbage collector roots...
error: cannot delete path
`/nix/store/rxryn23w373b8vjqqbgnp2lp8gcrjd3g-aterm-2.5.tar.gz' since it is still
alive
0 store paths deleted, 0 bytes (0.00 MiB, 0 blocks) freed

[root at dutibo:~]# nix-store --delete
/nix/store/rxryn23w373b8vjqqbgnp2lp8gcrjd3g-aterm-2.5.tar.gz --option
gc-keep-outputs false
finding garbage collector roots...
deleting `/nix/store/rxryn23w373b8vjqqbgnp2lp8gcrjd3g-aterm-2.5.tar.gz'
1 store paths deleted, 830158 bytes (0.79 MiB, 1632 blocks) freed

-- 
Eelco Dolstra | http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~dolstra/