Home
Schedule
Abstract Template
Masters Attendance
Nix:AFunctionalPackageManager

Stc
Date: 2010-01-21

Time: 12:00

Room: BBL room 079

----+++ Speaker: Paul Visschers

----+++ Title: Nix: a functional package manager

----+++ Abstract

One of the most useful features of most Linux distributions is their
package manager. This installs, updates and removes packages (which
usually contain programs, libraries and/or services) and handles
dependencies between them. Most package managers use a stateful approach
to this, destructively updating packages as they are upgraded. This
introduces similar problems to those in stateful (imperative) programming.

Nix is a package manager that instead uses a functional approach. In
this talk I will discuss the benefits of this approach, describe how Nix
works under the hood, how the same approach is used and extended in the
Linux distribution NixOS. I will also talk about recent work, such as
the new module system.