One presentation at NixCon 2017 that especially drew my attention was Nicolas Pierron‘s talk about Nixpkgs overlays (video, slides). I’d like to give a quick summary here for future reference. All the credits go to Nicolas, of course. Continue reading NixOS: The DOs and DON’Ts of nixpkgs overlays →

NixOS manages dependencies in a very strict way—sometimes too strict? Here at Flying Circus, many users prefer to compile custom applications in home directories. They link them against libraries they have installed before by nix-env. This works well… until something is updated! On the next change anywhere down the dependency chain, libraries get new hashes in the Nix store, the garbage collector removes old versions, and user applications break until recompiled.

In this blog post, I would like to introduce fc-userscan. This little tool scans (home) directories recursively for Nix store references and registers them as per-user roots with the garbage collector. This way, dependencies will be protected even if they cease to be referenced from “official” Nix roots like the current-system profile or a user’s local Nix profile. After registering formerly unmanaged references with fc-userscan, one can fearlessly run updates and garbage collection.

Continue reading Announcing fc-userscan →