[Nix-dev] NIXPKGS environment variable in nixos-rebuild

[Sander van der Burg - EWI]

In NixOS NIXPKGS is indeed used, but in some other tooling such as Disnix or stuff in our LaTeX repository NIXPKGS_ALL is used. I also use NIXPKGS_ALL in the nixos-{deploy-network,build-vms} commands. 

The main purpose of NIXPKGS_ALL is that external tooling knows where to find Nixpkgs, so that's why you probably don't need it in many cases.

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Lluís Batlle i Rossell [mailto:viriketo at gmail.com]
Verzonden: di 7-12-2010 18:11
Aan: Sander van der Burg - EWI
CC: nix-dev at cs.uu.nl
Onderwerp: Re: [Nix-dev] NIXPKGS environment variable in nixos-rebuild
 
On Tue, Dec 07, 2010 at 05:36:03PM +0100, Sander van der Burg wrote:
> I was writing some documentation for the nixos-{build-vms,deploy-network} commands and I noticed that the 'nixos-rebuild' command uses the NIXPKGS environment variable for locating Nixpkgs. I think the NIXPKGS_ALL environment has the same purpose (which is already set by default on NixOS). Shouldn't this be changed, or is there maybe a different purpose of using a separate NIXPKGS variable?

Although I may very well be wrong, I think that some old NixOS used NIXPKGS_ALL,
and that's why it was set. But at some point NixOS (modularisation?) started
using NIXPKGS, and the bashrc variable set was still NIXPKGS_ALL.

nix-env (the other nixpkgs user) uses ~/.nix-defexpr only, so I don't think
there is any use of NIXPKGS_ALL anywhere nowadays.

So if I'm right, bashrc should not set NIXPKGS_ALL.

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