Nix explained from the ground up

(CORRECTIONS IN THE DESCRIPTION) What is Nix? And how does it build software in a completely deterministic way? Chapters: 0:00 - Intro 0:45 - How Nix came to be 3:37 - Install Nix 4:13 - Nix Language speedrun 7:23 - builtins 8:09 - Paths and the Nix store 9:52 - Derivations 17:25 - Nixpkgs 18:05 - Remote Caches & dependency trees 19:30 - stdenv 22:03 - lib 22:30 - NixOS 22:58 - Outro Corrections: - Paths only get expanded to their store path during string interpolation (i.e. `${./my-file.txt}`). `builtins.toString` does *not* do that. (Thanks @tejing2001) - My example of using the system’s compiler only worked because MacOS does not provider proper containerization. On Linux you are (more) safe from accidentally writing an impure derivation. (Thanks @tejing2001) - buildPhase, installPhase (and other phases) have hooks that need to be invoked from the script you provide. I did not do that and it is usually a mistake. Details about the phases and their hooks is in the nixpkgs manual (Thanks @tejing2001). Resources: PhD Thesis: https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf Nix & NixOS: https://nixos.org Nixpkgs manual: https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/ Package manager graphs: https://repology.org/repositories/graphs Noogle: https://noogle.dev/ Nixpkgs search: https://search.nixos.org/packages Nix flakes: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Flakes Cachix: https://www.cachix.org/ Home Manager: https://nix-community.github.io/home-manager/ Nix pills: https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/ Music: “Good Night” by FASSSound https://pixabay.com/music/beats-good-night-160166/ Video software: Motion Canvas: https://motioncanvas.io/