[GTALUG] Virtualized OSes

[Jamon Camisso]

On 22/04/15 05:24 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> Yeah, that (sadly) is a good use case.  But surely a proper package
> management system would let you do this too.
> 
> - allow more than one version of a package to be installed
> 
> - allow more than one instance of the same package, but with different 
>   global configuration.  Perhaps global configuration is evil.
> 
> - allow package dependencies to contol which versions of each package
>   talk to each other.  For example, if A talks to B, under some
>   conditions, old A should talk to old B
> 
> - make sure that distinct package's configurations don't affect each
>   other.  Example: two different packages that use Apache; they should not
>   configure Apache in ways that conflict.
> 
> - job migration between machines, even while running, seems useful.
>   (That's not a package management problem.)

NixOS addresses quite a few of these. Each version of a package is built
into its own unique prefixed environment, and each build can have its
own env variables set. You're free to switch between versions on your
system as well.

Essentially it is a distro that is built using pointers to individual
packages' git commit ids.

Cheers, Jamon

http://nixos.org/nixos/about.html - see How does NixOS work?