4 ms·

Could someone post (or link to) the history of Nix, the package manager? Who developed it, key project milestones, etc.? I understand it comes from, or led to

by j1vms 10y ago

Could someone post (or link to) the history of Nix, the package manager? Who developed it, key project milestones, etc.? I understand it comes from, or led to, NixOS Linux distribution which uses Nix of course. The nixos.org website is a bit sparse on the Nix project's history, and same with wikipedia (though separately mentions that NixOS was a research project started by Eelco Dolstra in 2003).

tvon 10y ago
I don't know if it's useful to you, but I can link you to Eelco Dolstra’s PhD Thesis (2006): http://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf http://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf He also wrote this InfoQ article on the subject of Nix and NixOS which may have some useful information (2014): https://www.infoq.com/articles/configuration-management-with-nix https://www.infoq.com/articles/configuration-management-with... The Wikipedia pages for Nix and NixOS also have some interesting references. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NixOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NixOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_package_manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_package_manager Edit: I have been playing with NixOS at home for a few months and I think it's very interesting, but I'm a bit surprised I haven't heard more about it over the past decade or so. I'm thinking that the recent industry focus on deployments and provisioning has caused more people to come across it.
- jf 10y ago
  Thanks for posting these links. I didn't know about the PhD thesis and the InfoQ article is the best introduction to Nix that I've read yet!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wmertens 10y ago
* 2003 Nix & nixpkgs Language and packages * 2007 NixOS Linux distribution * 2009 Hydra Continuous Integration * 2011 NixOps Cloud deployer * 2013 First stable NixOS branch (from http://wmertens.github.io/nixos-cfgmgmtcamp-slides/#/1/1 http://wmertens.github.io/nixos-cfgmgmtcamp-slides/#/1/1 - non-authorative source :))
j1vms 10y ago
Nix (package manager): - There is a version history in the release notes appendix of the manual. [0] - As others have posted here, the project is currently hosted on github [1], though it was originally in a svn repo. [0] - Eelco Dolstra is the active project maintainer. [2] - First checkin for Nix was ~March 12, 2003 (in the file nix.c/nix.cc). [1] - Version 1.0 release on May 11, 2012 (also first release from github). [0] [0] Release Notes: http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#sec-relnotes http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#sec-relnotes [1] https://github.com/NixOS/nix https://github.com/NixOS/nix [2] https://github.com/edolstra https://github.com/edolstra Edit: Thanks to sibling posts for the other info they were able to dig up for us.

by j1vms 10y ago

tvon 10y ago

I don't know if it's useful to you, but I can link you to Eelco Dolstra’s PhD Thesis (2006): http://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf http://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf He also wrote this InfoQ article on the subject of Nix and NixOS which may have some useful information (2014): https://www.infoq.com/articles/configuration-management-with-nix https://www.infoq.com/articles/configuration-management-with... The Wikipedia pages for Nix and NixOS also have some interesting references. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NixOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NixOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_package_manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_package_manager Edit: I have been playing with NixOS at home for a few months and I think it's very interesting, but I'm a bit surprised I haven't heard more about it over the past decade or so. I'm thinking that the recent industry focus on deployments and provisioning has caused more people to come across it.

jf 10y ago
Thanks for posting these links. I didn't know about the PhD thesis and the InfoQ article is the best introduction to Nix that I've read yet!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

wmertens 10y ago

* 2003 Nix & nixpkgs Language and packages * 2007 NixOS Linux distribution * 2009 Hydra Continuous Integration * 2011 NixOps Cloud deployer * 2013 First stable NixOS branch (from http://wmertens.github.io/nixos-cfgmgmtcamp-slides/#/1/1 http://wmertens.github.io/nixos-cfgmgmtcamp-slides/#/1/1 - non-authorative source :))

j1vms 10y ago

Nix (package manager): - There is a version history in the release notes appendix of the manual. [0] - As others have posted here, the project is currently hosted on github [1], though it was originally in a svn repo. [0] - Eelco Dolstra is the active project maintainer. [2] - First checkin for Nix was ~March 12, 2003 (in the file nix.c/nix.cc). [1] - Version 1.0 release on May 11, 2012 (also first release from github). [0] [0] Release Notes: http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#sec-relnotes http://nixos.org/nix/manual/#sec-relnotes [1] https://github.com/NixOS/nix https://github.com/NixOS/nix [2] https://github.com/edolstra https://github.com/edolstra Edit: Thanks to sibling posts for the other info they were able to dig up for us.