[Nix-dev] NixOS "small" channel

[Eelco Dolstra]

Hi,

Since last week there is a new NixOS channel:

  https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-14.04-small

This is a variant of the regular NixOS 14.04 channel mainly intended for servers
that need fast security updates. It differs from the regular 14.04 channel in
the following ways:

* It builds way, way fewer packages. In particular, there is no desktop stuff,
and no gazillion Python/Perl/Haskel/... packages.

* It has fewer release-critical tests. For instance, it doesn't require any of
the X11 tests to succeed.

* It only builds x86_64 binaries.

These properties mean that the channel can update in about 2-3 hours after a Git
commit that causes a full rebuild, rather than several days. The downside is
that nixos-rebuild may need to build more stuff from source than with the
regular channel.

To switch an existing system to this channel:

  $ nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-14.04-small nixos
  $ nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade

The channel currently builds a fairly arbitrary set of packages. These are
defined here:

  https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/release-14.04/nixos/release-small.nix

Feel free to add/suggest additional packages.

The Hydra jobset is:

  http://hydra.nixos.org/jobset/nixos/release-14.04-small

and the status of the release-critical jobs is here:

  http://hydra.nixos.org/job/nixos/release-14.04-small/tested#tabs-constituents

-- 
Eelco Dolstra | LogicBlox, Inc. | http://nixos.org/~eelco/