[Nix-dev] Thoughts: What about using aufs instead of symlinks + env vars?

[Marc Weber]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 01:45:49AM +0400, Michael Raskin wrote:
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> Marc Weber wrote:
> > By using aufs you can be pretty sure that everything works as well if
> > you're using aufs again in your profile, correct?
> 
> No. Maybe executable name were different but library set has non-trivial
> file name conflict..
Thanks, I got you now. So at least before union mounting all those store
paths there should be a test checking for conflicts and a big fat
warning.

I still think that all those benefits could be worth giving it a try.

Probably there are even more benefits:
* Because there are no more store paths in the output its easier to verify
  that -j4 builds craeted the same result as -j1 builds

* there is a higher chance beeing ablte to reuse say gentoo ebuilds.
  Doing so would a add tons of packages with not much effort.

So this is more an alternative which could work in most cases.
It can't be a full replacement.

Marc Weber