Hello,
I’ve just installed and start to use nixpkg in my existing os.
However, one thing that frustrates me is that on startup, the first command I execute with nix-env, it will evaluate a whole bunch of files. It seems like it is evaluting all the packages.
This is just one line that I’ve seen by running nix-env -qa vscode --verbose:
evaluating file ‘/nix/store/q5k2man0mvd83nyvlf6r41nyw2c1rfqp-nixpkgs-21.11pre300283.f930ea227ce/nixpkgs/pkgs/tools/security/zzuf/default.nix’
Is there anything I’ve miss configured? All that I’ve touched is that I added two substituters.
Thanks.
This is expected behavior for nix-env, nix-env -qa will evaluate every package.
If you do nix-env -A then it will avoid trying to do the “fuzzy” search, and just do the package itself.
However, a lot of nix-env behavior isn’t what I would consider to be “idiomatic nix”. I would look into home-manager if you’re on another distro.
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Hello jonringer,
May I ask how to use the -A? I’ve checked the manual and it says that -A specifies an attribute, and I tried with like nix-env -qa -A nixpkgs vscode, and it didn’t seem to have any impact.
And I also ran nix-env -i git for example, it also ran a lot of evaluation, less than the nix-env -qa, but there are packages such as yarn or python, which seems a bit weird for me.
Using the home manager will obviously simplify a lot of things, but I’m just thinking maybe nix can be a complement for those fixed release distro, say debian, such that I can have a robust desktop environment, but have all the development tools at the latest version.
Thanks.
you could do nix-env -iA nixpkgs.git (first part needs to be the channel), I’m not sure what other commands also accept -A as I never use nix-env myself.
Thank you for your help.
I’ll give it a try.
I use nix-env because it is the “main commands” described in the manual. Though I wonder why there’s no description of the nix command.
most likely as it’s still not currently stable.