[Nix-dev] Hash Collisions

[Marc Weber]

Excerpts from Raahul Kumar's message of Tue Apr 08 03:11:03 +0000 2014:
> Thanks Marc, Kiril. Is there a way to create packages such that they don't
> provide redundant files? It's a waste of bandwidth to download a file,
> then be unable to use it because there is already a copy there. I guess
> deduplication is what I am looking for.
I'll give you another useful tip: If you want to "save bandwidth" then
switch to binary distro. While nixos has had the ability to create
"binary differences" I'm unsure wether its activated/available at the
moment. It was disabled in the past. Maybe somebody else can comment on
this.

Also "waste of space/bandwidth" always happens because:

  - nixos always ships with header files for all libraries
    (this could be fixed because nix supports multiple outputs)

  - if you replace "coreutils" you'll have to download everything, not
    just coreutils

To sum up: You're talking about having some man files twice (which
should not take much space if they are compressed). Thus I don't think
the effort/value ratio is great if you start fixing things at that level
:( - We still use nixos because we think the values nixos provides
(atomic updates, deterministic distributed builds) are more important to
us.

Anyway: Welcome to nixos :)

Marc Weber