Nix a Practical Introduction

Pros

• builds the same independent of user environment (not on platform)
• clean user env, no need to clutter your PATH with every persivable build tool
• no clashing versions, becaus each build has it's own environment, multiple versions of the same dependency won't clash
• coherent and declaritive way to define builds
• cachable build outputs
• reference any file via HTTP or GIT
• re-use between repos
• high level of control, model dependencies and build flows
• garbage collection of unused dependencies

Cons

• steep learning curve
• many ways to solve the same problem

Layered approach

• layer 1: write bash scripts and other programs
• layer 2: wrap in nix derivations for reproducablilty
• layer 3: package for deployment and distripution in images

What does it replace?

What doesn't it replace?

Where can we use it?

File dependencies and pre-processing (compiling etc.)

• when we have source code that needs compiling
• when we need to manage dependencies

Other use cases

• containarazation
  • create docker images from Nix derivations
• deployment
  • use NixOps to deploy services and link them together
• continuous Integration
  • run Nix derivations for testing and publish releases with build cache