Nix

Jul 20, 2023

Purely functional package manager

Nix is a purely functional package manager. This means that it treats packages like values in purely functional programming languages such as Haskell – they are built by functions that don’t have side-effects, and they never change after they have been built. Nix stores packages in the Nix store, usually the directory /nix/store, where each package has its own unique subdirectory such as

/nix/store/b6gvzjyb2pg0kjfwrjmg1vfhh54ad73z-firefox-33.1/

where b6gvzjyb2pg0… is a unique identifier for the package that captures all its dependencies it’s a cryptographic hash of the package’s build dependency graph. This enables many powerful features.



Checkout these related ports:
  • Zxfer - Easily and reliably transfer ZFS filesystems
  • Ztop - Display ZFS dataset I/O in real time
  • Zsm - ZFS Snapshot Manager
  • Zsd - Destroys ZFS snapshots
  • Zrepl - ZFS dataset replication tool
  • Zrep - ZFS based replication and failover solution
  • Zpool-iostat-viz - ZFS pool I/O latency statistics
  • Zoxide - Fast cd alternative that learns your habits
  • Zogftw - Creates redundant backups on encrypted ZFS pools
  • Znapzend - ZFS-centric backup tool
  • Zisofs-tools - User utilities for zisofs
  • Zidrav - File corruption detection and repair program
  • Zfstools - OpenSolaris-compatible auto snapshotting for ZFS
  • Zfsnap2 - Portable performant script to make rolling ZFS snapshots easy
  • Zfsnap - Simple sh script to make zfs rolling snaphosts with cron