Nix

Nix is the primary package management tool used for managing packages in my development environment. See the related architecture section for more details on how it fits into the overall environment.

Resources

• Website
• Documentation
• Wiki
• Nix Pills
• Nix DevOps

Install

The official installation script will do most of the work:

sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install)

Some notes about the installation process:

1. A new volume is created and mounted at /nix
2. The fstab is modified to auto-mount the volume at startup
3. The volume is owned by root and the generated nixbld accounts
4. The nix store is created at /nix/store
5. Various daemons are created for managing the Nix installation

Test the installation with the following command:

nix-shell -p nix-info --run "nix-info -m"

Uninstall

There doesn't seem to be good official instructions for uninstalling Nix. I've tested and had success using the instructions in this Github Issue.

Note that it's possible to run the installer again even with a dirty system and it should do the right thing.