[Nix-dev] Some newbie doubts

[Ashish SHUKLA]

Hi everyone,

I used NixOS for few days some months ago, and I liked it. Now, I wanted to
switch to it, but I'm having few doubts about the NixOS, and how I can get it
to fit my usage needs.

At the moment, all of my disks are GPT partitioned, and I use GRUB2 as the
bootloader. Last time, I used NixOS, there was no GRUB2 support and one of my
disk had old MBR style partitions, so I used GRUB support with my non-GPT
disk. So my first question is whether I'm able to use GRUB2 with NixOS, in the
same way as it works with GRUB. I searched for GRUB2 support in NixOS on
Google, found that it is now possible, but I just wanted to confirm this, as
I've found no such mention in the documentation yet. The way I'm going to use
is that in my current GRUB2 configuration, I'll add a menu for NixOS, which
will load GRUB2 configuration from the partition where I installed NixOS.

I also routinely build Emacs (and some other apps) from the git/subversion
repositories, and I prefer their installation to be integrated/register with
underlying package management system. So, I'm wondering if there is any
support in Nix expressions to be able to build packages using VCS (version
control system) repositories as the sources instead of some
tarballs. Following is how this happens currently during package building
process:

1. Check for the presence of repository directory.
2. If repository directory is present, then update the source code using VCS
   tool (.i.e. git pull, svn update, etc.), else checkout copy from the
   repository (.i.e. git clone, svn co, etc.).
3. After checkout/updating process, export the source code from repository to
   a directory (.i.e. git archive, svn export, etc.)
4. Build the source code.
5. Install it in a destination directory.
6. Build a package using the contents of the destination directory.

So, I'm wondering if Nix expression library has support for this kind of
scenario, or not ?

And also I noticed the layout of NixOS website has changed recently. I'm not
able to locate list of packages currently available in the stable channel. Can
anyone point me to some link which contains the list of packages available in
the current 'nixpkgs' collection ?

Thanks in advance,
Ashish SHUKLA
-- 
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
  -- Benjamin Franklin, Memoirs of the life and writings of Benjamin Franklin
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