[Nix-dev] Re: Non-root packaging system + stdenvNative and replace-literal

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Dag Sverre Seljebotn <dagseljebotn at gmail.com> writes:

> 2011/2/23 Ludovic Courtès <ludo at gnu.org>:

[...]

>> I wonder if using ‘stdenvNative’ is a real win.
>>
>> In the short term, there’s an advantage: fewer packages are
>> downloaded/built, resulting in lower disk usage.
>>
>> But in the longer term, if you keep using Nix over several months or
>> years, then you get to fill your Nix store anyway and the space
>> advantage becomes less and less important (because ‘stdenv’ is seldom
>> upgraded, compared to, say, Python or the various apps/libraries you
>> would use).
>>
>> More importantly, ‘stdenvNative’ is likely to yield to unreproducible
>> builds given that important software components escape Nix.
>
> Interesting point. Here's my reasons:
>
> 1) I think the most important point is psychologically.

Yes, agreed (I’ve experienced that too ;-)).

[...]

> 2) Regarding space, there's things like X libraries, GNOME, KDE and so
> on, that one may want to have a dependency on in visualization
> packages but which would really blow up the size (and yes,
> stdenvNative doesn't help here, it was just a place to start.). I'm
> sorry, but given the choice between linking with your X/GTK/Qt and
> Ubuntu's, I'd take Ubuntu's.

But then you’d need a super-duper ‘stdenvNative’, with the goal of
working around the Nix philosophy.

Did you consider other tools like Zero-Install [0], GUB [1], or even
good old makefiles as in BSD ports or GAR as used in GNU SRC [2]?

Thanks,
Ludo’.

[0] http://0install.net/
[1] http://lilypond.org/gub/
[2] http://www.gnu.org/software/gsrc/