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Can the evaluation tax be quantified in some way? In other words, how big is the problem that this solves?
by mongol 2y ago
Can the evaluation tax be quantified in some way? In other words, how big is the problem that this solves?
- biggestlou 2y agoUnfortunately, it's really hard to generalize. If the evaluation involves Nixpkgs, for example, Nix needs to copy Nixpkgs into the Nix store, which is many MB. And of course this needs to happen for all flake inputs. I've seen this evaluation take a few seconds and I've seen it take several minutes, but in general the more flake inputs the longer you can expect it to take.
- q3k 2y ago> If the evaluation involves Nixpkgs, for example, Nix needs to copy Nixpkgs into the Nix store, which is many MB. Only if you use flakes (and this behavior is a good reason to not use them).
- biggestlou 2y agoUsing flakes or not, any store path evaluation involving Nixpkgs is going to be computationally intensive, potentially too intensive for a memory-constrained device.
- grhmc 2y ago(DetSys Cofounder here) I've had Raspberry Pi's give up their last ghostly breath evaluating NixOS.