Re: [gentoo-dev] [PATCH] install-qa-check.d: Support QA{,_STRICT}_INSTALL_PATHS variables (bug 670902)

[Michael Orlitzky]

On 11/12/2018 06:47 PM, Zac Medico wrote:
>>
>> The idea being, to put it in the right place by default, and let people
>> override it with EXTRA_ECONF if they really want to download random
>> binaries from strangers and run them.
>
> I recommend to add /nix to the whitelist because this is the default
> location for all operating systems, as shown consistently throughout the
> installation instructions found at
> https://nixos.org/nix/manual/#chap-installation.

I mean... I know... my argument is not that they don't tell you to do
something dumb. If you really want the official experience, you can
close your eyes, cross your fingers, say a prayer to RMS, and then
follow their installation instructions:

 $ curl https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh

The fact that some people choose to use portage to install it probably
means that they were looking for something a little less yee-haw. We
trust the package manager to not let ebuilds do dumb things to our
systems: no surprise network access, no random filesystem reads/writes,
reliable uninstalls, things installed in sensible paths, etc. We
shouldn't make exceptions to those policies without a good reason.


> The nix manual also has this explicit warning in the "Building Nix from
> Source" section found at https://nixos.org/nix/manual/#sec-building-source:
>
>> Warning: It is best not to change the Nix store from its default,
> since doing
>> so makes it impossible to use pre-built binaries from the standard Nixpkgs
>> channels — that is, all packages will need to be built from source.

Do I have to be that guy who suggests that if people don't want to build
from source, then maybe they took a wrong turn back at distrowatch?

You can override the nix store location with EXTRA_ECONF if you really
want to dump stuff in /nix. At which point the warning is just telling
you what's up: you're doing something wrong.