[Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere

[Shea Levy]

+1! This is really cool.
Tomasz Czyż <tomasz.czyz at gmail.com> writes:

> I would vote for mirroring this tool in nixos github namespace (or even
> trying to make this project official one) as it can have big impact of
> propagating/implementing nix ideas into environments where it's not
> straight forward to use it.
>
> What do you think people?
>
> 2017-02-07 11:31 GMT+00:00 Tomasz Czyż <tomasz.czyz at gmail.com>:
>
>> Matthew,
>> very good tool, thank you for sharing.
>>
>> 2017-02-07 10:32 GMT+00:00 Domen Kožar <domen at dev.si>:
>>
>>> Awesome! I will need this very soon, good timing :)
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Moritz Ulrich <moritz at tarn-vedra.de>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hey Matthew,
>>>>
>>>> This sounds great! I'll give it a try :-)
>>>>
>>>> One question: Will it create a persistent /nix directory on the machine
>>>> the generated binary is running?
>>>>
>>>> Cheers
>>>> Moritz
>>>>
>>>> Matthew Bauer <mjbauer95 at gmail.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>> > GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
>>>> >
>>>> > I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on. I'm
>>>> > calling it "nix-bundle".
>>>> >
>>>> > Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
>>>> > tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
>>>> > final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
>>>> > tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
>>>> > execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
>>>> > will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All of
>>>> > this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with a
>>>> > valid executable.
>>>> >
>>>> > For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:
>>>> >
>>>> > ./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello
>>>> >
>>>> > "hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
>>>> > ${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
>>>> > called "hello".
>>>> >p
>>>> > The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
>>>> > external dependencies are needed because they are all contained within
>>>> > the Nix closure.
>>>> >
>>>> > There are two main drawbacks: slow startup and large file size.
>>>> > Extracting the tarball takes time and this adds on to startup times.
>>>> > Also, because everything is included from the Nix closure, complicated
>>>> > apps tend to be much larger because of the dependency tree.
>>>> >
>>>> > I've been experimenting with using AppImage as a format to package
>>>> > them in, but it is not currently ready yet.
>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>> > nix-dev mailing list
>>>> > nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
>>>> > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tomasz Czyż
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Tomasz Czyż
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