nix-super/doc/manual/introduction.xml

<chapter><title>Introduction</title>

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<para>Nix is a system for the deployment of software.  Software
deployment is concerned with the creation, distribution, and
management of software components (<quote>packages</quote>).  Its main
features are:

<itemizedlist>

<listitem><para>It helps you make sure that dependency specifications
are complete.  In general in a deployment system you have to specify
for each component what its dependencies are, but there are no
guarantees that this specification is complete.  If you forget a
dependency, then the component will build and work correctly on
<emphasis>your</emphasis> machine if you have the dependency
installed, but not on the end user's machine if it's not
there.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>It is possible to have <emphasis>multiple versions or
variants</emphasis> of a component installed at the same time.  In
contrast, in systems such as RPM different versions of the same
package tend to install to the same location in the file system, so
installing one version will remove the other.  This is especially
important if you want to use applications that have conflicting
requirements on different versions of a component (e.g., application A
requires version 1.0 of library X, while application B requires a
non-backwards compatible version 1.1).</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Users can have different <quote>views</quote>
(<quote>profiles</quote> in Nix parlance) on the set of installed
applications in a system.  For instance, one user can have version 1.0
of some package visible, while another is using version 1.1, and a
third doesn't use it at all.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>It is possible to atomically
<emphasis>upgrade</emphasis> software.  I.e., there is no time window
during an upgrade in which part of the old version and part of the new
version are simultaneously visible (which might well cause the
component to fail).</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Likewise, it is possible to atomically roll back after
an install, upgrade, or uninstall action.  That is, in a fast (O(1))
operation the previous configuration of the system can be restored.
This is because upgrade or uninstall actions don't actually remove
components from the system.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Unused components can be
<emphasis>garbage-collected</emphasis> automatically and safely: when
you remove an application from a profile, its dependencies will be
deleted by the garbage collector only if there are no other active
applications using them.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Nix supports both source-based deployment models
(where you distribute <emphasis>Nix expressions</emphasis> that tell
Nix how to build software from source) and binary-based deployment
models.  The latter is more-or-less transparent: installation of
components is always based on Nix expressions, but if the expressions
have been built before and Nix knows that the resulting binaries are
available somewhere, it will use those instead.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Nix is flexible in the deployment policies that it
supports.  There is a clear separation between the tools that
implement basic Nix <emphasis>mechanisms</emphasis> (e.g., building
Nix expressions), and the tools that implement various deployment
<emphasis>policies</emphasis>.  For instance, there is a concept of
<quote>Nix channels</quote> that can be used to keep software
installations up-to-date automatically from a network source.  This is
a policy that is implemented by a fairly short Perl script, which can
be adapted easily to achieve similar policies.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Nix component builds aim to be <quote>pure</quote>;
that is, unaffected by anything other than the declared dependencies.
This means that if a component was built successfully once, it can be
rebuilt again on another machine and the result will be the same.  We
cannot <emphasis>guarantee</emphasis> this (e.g., if the build depends
on the time-of-day), but Nix (and the tools in the Nix Packages
collection) takes special care to help achieve this.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Nix expressions (the things that tell Nix how to build
components) are self-contained: they describe not just components but
complete compositions.  In other words, Nix expressions also describe
how to build all the dependencies.  This is in contrast to component
specification languages like RPM spec files, which might say that a
component X depends on some other component Y, but since it does not
describe <emphasis>exactly</emphasis> what Y is, the result of
building or running X might be different on different machines.
Combined with purity, self-containedness ensures that a component that
<quote>works</quote> on one machine also works on another, when
deployed using Nix.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>The Nix expression language makes it easy to describe
variability in components (e.g., optional features or
dependencies).</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Nix is ideal for building build farms that do
continuous builds of software from a version management system, since
it can take care of building all the dependencies as well.  Also, Nix
only rebuilds components that have changed, so there are no
unnecessary builds.  In addition, Nix can transparently distribute
build jobs over different machines, including different
platforms.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Nix can be used not only for software deployment, but
also for <emphasis>service deployment</emphasis>, such as the
deployment of a complete web server with all its configuration files,
static pages, software dependencies, and so on.  Nix's advantages for
software deployment also apply here: for instance, the ability
trivially to have multiple configurations at the same time, or the
ability to do rollbacks.</para></listitem>

<listitem><para>Nix can efficiently upgrade between different versions
of a component through <emphasis>binary patching</emphasis>.  If
patches are available on a server, and you try to install a new
version of some component, Nix will automatically apply a patch (or
sequence of patches), if available, to transform the installed
component into the new version.</para></listitem> 

</itemizedlist>

</para>

<para>This manual tells you how to install and use Nix and how to
write Nix expressions for software not already in the Nix Packages
collection.  It also discusses some advanced topics, such as setting
up a Nix-based build farm, and doing service deployment using
Nix.</para>

<warning><para>This manual is a work in progress.  It's quite likely
to be incomplete, inconsistent with the current implementation, or
simply wrong.</para></warning>

<note><para>Some background information on Nix can be found in two
papers.  The ICSE 2004 paper <ulink
url='http://www.cs.uu.nl/~eelco/pubs/immdsd-icse2004-final.pdf'><citetitle>Imposing
a Memory Management Discipline on Software
Deployment</citetitle></ulink> discusses the hashing mechanism used to
ensure reliable dependency identification and non-interference between
different versions and variants of packages.  The LISA 2004 paper
<ulink
url='http://www.cs.uu.nl/~eelco/pubs/nspfssd-lisa2004-final.pdf'><citetitle>Nix:
A Safe and Policy-Free System for Software
Deployment</citetitle></ulink> gives a more general discussion of Nix
from a system-administration perspective.</para></note>

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