I recently started using nix to manage my dev environment on my immutable distro, and I need some help.
I was wondering if I am using a large package like TexLiveFull, how to make sure nix don't delete large packages after I close the shell? I also don't want this package to be available in my global environment, as I don't need to use it outside vscode.
Another question is how to keep my packages up-to-date. I don't do serious development work, thus I typically perfer my package and dev-tools to be on the latest version. I prefer to have a little management of this as possible. Ideally, every time I start up a nix shell, the package manager will grab the latest version of the package if possible without requiring additional interaction from me. Is this possible?
Finally, is there any way to bubblewrap programs installed by nix to only access the file within the starting path of the shell? I don't imagine this is possible, but it would definitely be nice if nix has some security feature like this.
Thanks in advance for your help! I understand parts of this post might be ridiculous. I am still new to nix. Please correct me if I am not using nix in the "correct" way.
Another question is how to keep my packages up-to-date. I don’t do serious development work, thus I typically perfer my package and dev-tools to be on the latest version. I prefer to have a little management of this as possible. Ideally, every time I start up a nix shell, the package manager will grab the latest version of the package if possible without requiring additional interaction from me. Is this possible?
Definitely sounds like you should look into using https://direnv.net/. Once you direnv allow the directory, as soon as you enter the directory it will create per-project isolated development environments.
The in the .envrc file you could have something like:
nix flake update
use flake
If your using nix flakes which also imply you're using git.
However, without flakes you could use a tool like:
I was wondering if I am using a large package like TexLiveFull, how to make sure nix don’t delete large packages after I close the shell? I also don’t want this package to be available in my global environment, as I don’t need to use it outside vscode.
In the link above check out the table in the "Some factors to consider" section. However, note that it hasn't be updated since May 30, 2022.
Many of those tools don't depend on direnv if you don't need its functionality.
Personally, I use direnv and enable nix-direnv using these options:
Edit: damn over wrote what I wrote to the first question with a response to the second question. Thank goodness for automatic file backups I have setup in Emacs.
direnv is small enough that you can manually audit it by reading the source code. nix-direnv is also small enough for this, and conceptually it is a replacement for direnv's builtin Nix support.
You don't need home-manager yet, and you can put it off for a while; it's mostly useful if you want to instantiate a homedir on multiple machines.
When you install something, it is added to the store. The store is used as cache and won't be delete until you run nix-garbage-collect. Do you have experience with it redownloading?