NixOS

nix is a linux package manager which provides a way to deploy and manage linux systems and ephemeral computing environments which depend only on expressions declared in the nix language. In the context of scientific computing it can replace or compliment package management and virtualization tools like conda and docker, while providing more robust guarantees that the environment can be reproduced by other researchers. At the IMHR, nix is being used to power some networked computing resources in such a way that users can work in isolation on a shared system without the overhead of virtualization or scheduling, and with a configuration workflow that allows complex services to be deployed and maintained with little engineering and IT staff effort. This talk will discuss the shortcomings of other package managers within the context of linux dependency management and the high level architectural features of nix which address these shortcomings. To remain grounded we'll discuss some of the pitfalls of this emerging technology and in particular the significant technical difficulty in using the nix programming language. Finally, we'll conclude by illustrating some use cases.

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