[Nix-dev] AppImage

[Bjørn Forsman]

On 28 February 2016 at 15:28, Bjørn Forsman <bjorn.forsman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28 February 2016 at 15:07, Vladimír Čunát <vcunat at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 02/28/2016 02:59 PM, Bjørn Forsman wrote:
>> Fetching expressions is something else than the author wants.
>> Third-party binary packages for nix can be provided, and we have those
>> one-click installs for that. Of course one would have to have some
>> package manager on the system already (Nix in this case), which is
>> considered a large disadvantage by them.
>
> Oh, I didn't know that one-click installer packages could be made by
> third parties. I'll read the manpage now.

I looked at "man nix-install-package" and the One-click installation
section in the NixOS manual,
http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#sec-nix-install-package. Neither source
made me understand how to _create_ a .nixpkg file. The manual
described the internals of the .nixpkg file though. If one would have
to install Hydra to build .nixpkg files(?), not good.

I think it should be as simple as:

  nix create-nixpkgs myapp   # myapp is an attribute referring to a derivation

Then upload the resulting .nixpkg to a webserver.

Unfortunately, I don't have skills nor time to implement that.

BTW, nix-install-package manpage refers to "manifests". Didn't nix
deprecate manifests some time ago?

Best regards,
Bjørn Forsman