stoo/nixbase repository overview

⁠NOTE: This should be considered Alpha quality for now. I have barely begun using it myself. Feel free to submit issues at https://git.stoo.org/infra/docker-nixbase/issues⁠ !

⁠Nix Base Image

This is a minimal image that uses the Nix package manager. The system is completely Nix-based and it is not built from any other OS image.

⁠Differences from nixos/nix

This image does not use buildroot/busybox as a base. Nix provides all software. The Nix package manager itself is built from source in a Debian-based Docker image, and is then used to bootstrap Nix into a fresh container.

⁠Tag Policy

This image forms the core of a repeatable deployment system. Docker image tags will never be updated once pushed; instead, a new tag will be created. Specifically, I have decided not to use the "latest" tag for these images, as I want to encourage repeatable downstream images. If you are using this image, I assume you are already interested in making deployments as deterministic as possible, so I will not lead you astray with a dynamic tag.

⁠Nixpkgs

This image is built using a fork of the Nixpkgs repository, located at https://git.stoo.org/infra/nixpkgs⁠. This fork was created from the nixos-14.12 branch, commit 4e8d015. I have made a few closure additions under stoopkgs/, but the repository is otherwise identical to the upstream repository.

I plan to generalize my approach and support concurrent versions of this base image. In particular, I expect to have versions based on stock Nixpkgs instead of my fork. You are free to build your own variant as well, see "Building" below. I would love to add such flexibility into a single system, though, so please consider contributing improvements.

For now, the following tag exists:

• stoo-0.1-1 - First build of base image based on tag stoo-0.1 (https://git.stoo.org/infra/nixpkgs/commits/stoo-0.1⁠)

⁠Building

You don't have to depend on my binary version of this image. Unfortunately, it is too complex to build using a single Dockerfile, but it should only require git, make, and Docker to build. The repository is located at https://git.stoo.org/infra/docker-nixbase⁠. The README.md if forthcoming; simply type 'make' to build.

⁠Bugs

This image is probably too large for what it is. I will work to make it smaller.