4 ms·

I wonder why Nix doesn't give every package a FHS env by default. In 2022 chroot and overlayfs should be available everywhere. Wouldn't that solve a ton of prob

I wonder why Nix doesn't give every package a FHS env by default. In 2022 chroot and overlayfs should be available everywhere. Wouldn't that solve a ton of problems?

chriswarbo 4y ago
Nix has no concept of "package". Applications are defined as derivations, but so is everything else (I wouldn't want an entire FHS directory structure for, e.g., a single text file). If you want an FHS, you can get one using a function like buildFHSUserEnv (that's defined in the Nixpkgs project; Nix itself doesn't know or care what FHS is; indeed, Nix will happily run on non-Linux platforms)
SuperSandro2000 4y ago
A FHS adds slight overhead to a package and to launch times. It also shadows part of the file system. For example /lib would probably be different for every other program which would be even more confusing.
- pxc 4y ago
  They're also not implemented on macOS, since they rely on Linux sandboxing features.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Plus nix allows more than possible with FHS alone. What if your package has to use multiple versions of a single dependency? You are back to square one, for no good reason.