2014-01-17

Using the Nix package manager

In this post I’ll explain how to use the Nix package manager which is fully supported and ready to be used for all users in the Void distribution. A brief introduction:

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.`

The instructions are quite simple, install the nix package, start the nix-daemon service and setup the user environment:

# xbps-install -Sy nix
# systemctl start nix-daemon

You can now either re-login your user or re-read /etc/profile:

$ source /etc/profile

After this the nix package manager is fully functional and can be used by any user.

You can then subscribe to the Nix packages channel to query or install any available package:

$ nix-channel --add http://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable
$ nix-channel --update

See http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#chap-quick-start for more information.

NixOS website: http://nixos.org/