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While this is not actually a notion in the implementation, it is explicitly described in the thesis and quite important for understanding how the store works. Co-authored-by: John Ericson <git@JohnEricson.me> Co-authored-by: Robert Hensing <roberth@users.noreply.github.com>
64 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
64 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
# File System Object
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Nix uses a simplified model of the file system, which consists of file system objects.
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Every file system object is one of the following:
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- File
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- A possibly empty sequence of bytes for contents
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- A single boolean representing the [executable](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File-system_permissions#Permissions) permission
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- Directory
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Mapping of names to child file system objects
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- [Symbolic link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link)
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An arbitrary string.
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Nix does not assign any semantics to symbolic links.
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File system objects and their children form a tree.
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A bare file or symlink can be a root file system object.
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Nix does not encode any other file system notions such as [hard links](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_link), [permissions](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File-system_permissions), timestamps, or other metadata.
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## Examples of file system objects
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A plain file:
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```
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50 B, executable: false
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```
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An executable file:
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```
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122 KB, executable: true
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```
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A symlink:
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```
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-> /usr/bin/sh
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```
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A directory with contents:
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```
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├── bin
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│ └── hello: 35 KB, executable: true
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└── share
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├── info
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│ └── hello.info: 36 KB, executable: false
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└── man
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└── man1
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└── hello.1.gz: 790 B, executable: false
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```
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A directory that contains a symlink and other directories:
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```
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├── bin -> share/go/bin
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├── nix-support/
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└── share/
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```
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