# Nixos-rebuild-ng: a nixos-rebuild rewrite
**URL:** https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606
**Category:** Announcements
**Created:** [November 6, 2024, 3:52pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606 "2024-11-06T15:52:39Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@waffle8946](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/waffle8946)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2025, 12:57pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606/61 "2025-07-20T12:57:05Z")
If you want to be passive-aggressive and not contribute anything, you’re not going to get anywhere. Good luck.
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### Author:  [@k0kada](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/k0kada)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2025, 2:48pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606/62 "2025-07-20T14:48:18Z")
> [@bme](#):
>
> If it doesn’t depend on it, and it isn’t necessary for it to function correctly imo, a warning log is the wrong log. Now, I will grant that I didn’t realise this was _also_ the previous behaviour.
>
> I’ll see if I can find some time this weekend to open an MR discussing removing the warning log. I’d personally demote it to debug, but info I could also see.
It is not necessary for it to function, it is necessary for it to function _correctly_ though (without `git` we can’t set the `.version-suffix` file that it is used by some tools), so from your own definition a warning log is exactly what we want there.
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### Author:  [@ThePhoenix](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/ThePhoenix)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2025, 2:58pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606/63 "2025-07-20T14:58:55Z")
Nice one!, thanks for opening this!
It being absent from NixOS _and_ the official ISOs always struck me as a bizarre choice, and it actually annoyed me enough as a brand new user of Nix/NixOS/git (yes, all 3 simultaneously) that I ended up spending far too much time trying to work out how to make a custom ISO.
If the reasoning was solely the size of the package, I kinda feel like that’s backwards - given where we are now with storage.
If someone wants to create an _extremely_ minimal installation/ISO, then surely that should be a task for an individual, rather than a default (IMO).
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### Author:  [@waffle8946](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/waffle8946)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2025, 3:01pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606/64 "2025-07-20T15:01:45Z")
> [@ThePhoenix](#):
>
> If the reasoning was solely the size of the package, I kinda feel like that’s backwards - given where we are now with storage.
I think it was more about the download size rather than storage. But NixOS is already quite network-heavy, and we may be better off as you said creating a separate super-minimal ISO.
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### Author:  [@ElvishJerricco](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/ElvishJerricco)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2025, 3:45pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606/65 "2025-07-20T15:45:16Z")
> [@waffle8946](#):
>
> I think it was more about the download size rather than storage
More like cache size. We’ve been putting some effort recently into reducing the amount of space the ISO takes up on the binary cache. It’s one of the bigger build products in every Hydra eval, and space usage on S3 is something that has been challenging for the Foundation to keep funded.
I’ll try and figure out if including git comes with a noticeable size increase.
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### Author:  [@ElvishJerricco](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/ElvishJerricco)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2025, 4:20pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606/66 "2025-07-20T16:20:43Z")
> [@ThePhoenix](#):
>
> It being absent from NixOS _and_ the official ISOs always struck me as a bizarre choice
Apparently it isn’t absent from the ISOs since last year.
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### Author:  [@bme](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/bme)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2025, 9:31pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606/67 "2025-07-21T21:31:40Z")
Good luck with what? Get anywhere with what? I certainly wasn’t hoping for anything from you in this thread. I have what I was looking to understand which is that the package isn’t correctly packaged (author directly states that the script doesn’t function correctly without it), and if I get a moment I’ll see if I can help with this. FWIW I think talking about whether git is or isn’t included in the ISO is a red-herring. nixos-rebuild should function without warnings standalone. I think given that all it does is call `rev-parse HEAD` there are probably ways to achieve that without the git binary at all.
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### Author:  [@arthsmn](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/arthsmn)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2025, 12:34pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606/68 "2025-07-26T12:34:28Z")
Hey, I was wondering if there isn’t any way to use another program when passing `--sudo`, I wanted to use run0 but a option would be useful for doas as well.
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### Author:  [@k0kada](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/k0kada)
#### Post date: [November 10, 2025, 3:06pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606/69 "2025-11-10T15:06:56Z")
I would definitely welcome a PR here. It is not something that I am interested in working myself since I don’t use either `run0` or `doas`, so it is difficult for me to test that it is working correctly.
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### Author:  [@AkechiShiro](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/AkechiShiro)
#### Post date: [November 26, 2025, 7:52pm UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-rebuild-ng-a-nixos-rebuild-rewrite/55606/70 "2025-11-26T19:52:01Z")
I think what you may be looking for is [Dead man switch for nixos-rebuild switch / boot](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/dead-man-switch-for-nixos-rebuild-switch-boot/63988)
I haven’t tried it, but it looks close to what you would like to see in the rewrite as feature
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