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List:       nix-dev
Subject:    Re: [Nix-dev] nix-bundle: Bundle Nix derivations to run anywhere
From:       Moritz Ulrich <moritz () tarn-vedra ! de>
Date:       2017-02-07 10:30:20
Message-ID: 8760km5m4j.fsf () tarn-vedra ! de
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Hey Matthew,

This sounds great! I'll give it a try :-)

One question: Will it create a persistent /nix directory on the machine
the generated binary is running? 

Cheers
Moritz

Matthew Bauer <mjbauer95@gmail.com> writes:

> GitHub page: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle
>
> I just wanted to post about a little project I've been working on. I'm
> calling it "nix-bundle".
>
> Basically, what it does is: take a Nix closure, compress it into a
> tarball, and turn that tarball into an executable using "Arx". The
> final result looks like a plain shell script, but actually has a
> tarball closure appended to it. When you run that script, Arx will
> execute "nix-user-chroot" (which is included in the closure) which
> will setup a /nix/ directory, then execute a target executable. All of
> this should work "out of the box" for any Nix derivation folder with a
> valid executable.
>
> For example, to generate a "hello" bundle:
>
> ./nix-bundle.sh hello /bin/hello
>
> "hello" specifies pkgs.hello and /bin/hello specifies the file
> ${pkgs.helloi}/bin/hello to be executed. The output file will just be
> called "hello".
>p
> The result is a "bundle" that can run without Nix being installed! No
> external dependencies are needed because they are all contained within
> the Nix closure.
>
> There are two main drawbacks: slow startup and large file size.
> Extracting the tarball takes time and this adds on to startup times.
> Also, because everything is included from the Nix closure, complicated
> apps tend to be much larger because of the dependency tree.
>
> I've been experimenting with using AppImage as a format to package
> them in, but it is not currently ready yet.
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