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Manual: Describe NixOS package management styles

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doc/manual/configuration.xml
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@ -11,6 +11,300 @@ NixOS machine through the configuration file
effect after you run <command>nixos-rebuild</command>.</para>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section><title>Package management</title>
<para>This section describes how to add additional packages to your
system. NixOS has two distinct styles of package management:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Declarative</emphasis>, where you declare
what packages you want in your
<filename>configuration.nix</filename>. Every time you run
<command>nixos-rebuild</command>, NixOS will ensure that you get a
consistent set of binaries corresponding to your
specification.</para></listitem>
<listitem><para><emphasis>Ad hoc</emphasis>, where you install,
upgrade and uninstall packages via the <command>nix-env</command>
command. This style allows mixing packages from different Nixpkgs
versions. It’s the only choice for non-root
users.</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
<para>The next two sections describe these two styles.</para>
<section><title>Declarative package management</title>
<para>With declarative package management, you specify which packages
you want on your system by setting the option
<option>environment.systemPackages</option>. For instance, adding the
following line to <filename>configuration.nix</filename> enables the
Mozilla Thunderbird email application:
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.thunderbird ];
</programlisting>
The effect of this specification is that the Thunderbird package from
Nixpkgs will be built or downloaded as part of the system when you run
<command>nixos-rebuild switch</command>.</para>
<para>You can get a list of the available packages as follows:
<screen>
$ nix-env -qaP '*' --description
nixos.pkgs.firefox firefox-23.0 Mozilla Firefox - the browser, reloaded
<replaceable>...</replaceable>
</screen>
The first column in the output is the <emphasis>attribute
name</emphasis>, such as
<literal>nixos.pkgs.thunderbird</literal>. (The
<literal>nixos</literal> prefix allows distinguishing between
different channels that you might have.)</para>
<para>To “uninstall” a package, simply remove it from
<option>environment.systemPackages</option> and run
<command>nixos-rebuild switch</command>.</para>
<section><title>Customising packages</title>
<para>Some packages in Nixpkgs have options to enable or disable
optional functionality or change other aspects of the package. For
instance, the Firefox wrapper package (which provides Firefox with a
set of plugins such as the Adobe Flash player) has an option to enable
the Google Talk plugin. It can be set in
<filename>configuration.nix</filename> as follows:
<filename>
nixpkgs.config.firefox.enableGoogleTalkPlugin = true;
</filename>
</para>
<warning><para>Unfortunately, Nixpkgs currently lacks a way to query
available configuration options.</para></warning>
<para>Apart from high-level options, it’s possible to tweak a package
in almost arbitrary ways, such as changing or disabling dependencies
of a package. For instance, the Emacs package in Nixpkgs by default
has a dependency on GTK+ 2. If you want to build it against GTK+ 3,
you can specify that as follows:
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages = [ (pkgs.emacs.override { gtk = pkgs.gtk3; }) ];
</programlisting>
The function <varname>override</varname> performs the call to the Nix
function that produces Emacs, with the original arguments amended by
the set of arguments specified by you. So here the function argument
<varname>gtk</varname> gets the value <literal>pkgs.gtk3</literal>,
causing Emacs to depend on GTK+ 3. (The parentheses are necessary
because in Nix, function application binds more weakly than list
construction, so without them,
<literal>environment.systemPackages</literal> would be a list with two
elements.)</para>
<para>Even greater customisation is possible using the function
<varname>overrideDerivation</varname>. While the
<varname>override</varname> mechanism above overrides the arguments of
a package function, <varname>overrideDerivation</varname> allows
changing the <emphasis>result</emphasis> of the function. This
permits changing any aspect of the package, such as the source code.
For instance, if you want to override the source code of Emacs, you
can say:
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages =
[ (pkgs.lib.overrideDerivation pkgs.emacs (attrs: {
name = "emacs-25.0-pre";
src = /path/to/my/emacs/tree;
}))
];
</programlisting>
Here, <varname>overrideDerivation</varname> takes the Nix derivation
specified by <varname>pkgs.emacs</varname> and produces a new
derivation in which the original’s <literal>name</literal> and
<literal>src</literal> attribute have been replaced by the given
values. The original attributes are accessible via
<varname>attrs</varname>.</para>
<para>The overrides shown above are not global. They do not affect
the original package; other packages in Nixpkgs continue to depend on
the original rather than the customised package. This means that if
another package in your system depends on the original package, you
end up with two instances of the package. If you want to have
everything depend on your customised instance, you can apply a
<emphasis>global</emphasis> override as follows:
<screen>
nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides = pkgs:
{ emacs = pkgs.emacs.override { gtk = pkgs.gtk3; };
};
</screen>
The effect of this definition is essentially equivalent to modifying
the <literal>emacs</literal> attribute in the Nixpkgs source tree.
Any package in Nixpkgs that depends on <literal>emacs</literal> will
be passed your customised instance. (However, the value
<literal>pkgs.emacs</literal> in
<varname>nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides</varname> refers to the
original rather than overriden instance, to prevent an infinite
recursion.)</para>
</section>
<section><title>Adding custom packages</title>
<para>It’s possible that a package you need is not available in NixOS.
In that case, you can do two things. First, you can clone the Nixpkgs
repository, add the package to your clone, and (optionally) submit a
patch or pull request to have it accepted into the main Nixpkgs
repository. This is described in detail in the <link
xlink:href="http://hydra.nixos.org/job/nixpkgs/trunk/tarball/latest/download-by-type/doc/manual">Nixpkgs
manual</link>. In short, you clone Nixpkgs:
<screen>
$ git clone git://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs.git
$ cd nixpkgs
</screen>
Then you write and test the package as described in the Nixpkgs
manual. Finally, you add it to
<literal>environment.systemPackages</literal>, e.g.
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.my-package ];
</programlisting>
and you run <command>nixos-rebuild</command>, specifying your own
Nixpkgs tree:
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch -I nixpkgs=/path/to/my/nixpkgs</screen>
</para>
<para>The second possibility is to add the package outside of the
Nixpkgs tree. For instance, here is how you specify a build of the
<link xlink:href="http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/">GNU Hello</link>
package directly in <filename>configuration.nix</filename>:
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages =
let
my-hello = with pkgs; stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
name = "hello-2.8";
src = fetchurl {
url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
sha256 = "0wqd8sjmxfskrflaxywc7gqw7sfawrfvdxd9skxawzfgyy0pzdz6";
};
};
in
[ my-hello ];
</programlisting>
Of course, you can also move the definition of
<literal>my-hello</literal> into a separate Nix expression, e.g.
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages = [ (import ./my-hello.nix) ];
</programlisting>
where <filename>my-hello.nix</filename> contains:
<programlisting>
with &lt;nixpkgs> {}; # bring all of Nixpkgs into scope
stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
name = "hello-2.8";
src = fetchurl {
url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
sha256 = "0wqd8sjmxfskrflaxywc7gqw7sfawrfvdxd9skxawzfgyy0pzdz6";
};
}
</programlisting>
This allows testing the package easily:
<screen>
$ nix-build my-hello.nix
$ ./result/bin/hello
Hello, world!
</screen>
</para>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Ad hoc package management</title>
<para>With the command <command>nix-env</command>, you can install and
uninstall packages from the command line. For instance, to install
Mozilla Thunderbird:
<screen>
$ nix-env -iA nixos.pkgs.thunderbird</screen>
If you invoke this as root, the package is installed in the Nix
profile <filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/default</filename> and visible
to all users of the system; otherwise, the package ends up in
<filename>/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/<replaceable>username</replaceable>/profile</filename>
and is not visible to other users. The <option>-A</option> flag
specifies the package by its attribute name; without it, the package
is installed by matching against its package name
(e.g. <literal>thunderbird</literal>). The latter is slower because
it requires matching against all available Nix packages, and is
ambiguous if there are multiple matching packages.</para>
<para>Packages come from the NixOS channel. You typically upgrade a
package by updating to the latest version of the NixOS channel:
<screen>
$ nix-channel --update nixos
</screen>
and then running <literal>nix-env -i</literal> again. Other packages
in the profile are <emphasis>not</emphasis> affected; this is the
crucial difference with the declarative style of package management,
where running <command>nixos-rebuild switch</command> causes all
packages to be updated to their current versions in the NixOS channel.
You can however upgrade all packages for which there is a newer
version by doing:
<screen>
$ nix-env -u '*'
</screen>
</para>
<para>A package can be unstalled using the <option>-e</option>
flag:
<screen>
$ nix-env -e thunderbird
</screen>
</para>
<para>Finally, you can roll back an undesirable
<command>nix-env</command> action:
<screen>
$ nix-env --rollback
</screen>
</para>
<para><command>nix-env</command> has many more flags. For details,
see the
<citerefentry><refentrytitle>nix-env</refentrytitle><manvolnum>1</manvolnum></citerefentry>
manpage or the Nix manual.</para>
</section>
</section>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section><title>Networking</title>

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doc/manual/installation.xml
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@ -307,7 +307,7 @@ available.</para>
<!--===============================================================-->
<section>
<section xml:id="sec-upgrading">
<title>Upgrading NixOS</title>