Nicolas B. Pierron

Nix is a package manager that provides side-by-side installation of multiple versions of a package, multi-user package management and easy setup of build environments. This talk highlights how simple features of a package manager can change the way components are developed and deployed. We will investigate how Nix works and demonstrate how to use it throughout the development cycle. We will create a development environment, configure a system service, deploy to a container for testing and finally deploy a remote system.

• Package management:
• Issues: Correctness, Completeness, Interference.

• Deployment: Source vs. Binary.

• Nix

• Isolation: Hashing build inputs.
• Making build environment.
• Demo: Building a package.

• Source & Binary deployment.

• NixOS

• Configuration implies Installation.
• Configuration management & Abstraction.

• Demo: Generate configuration files around a service.

• NixOps

• Provisioning a configuration.
• Demo: Testing deployment.