TARDIS Project

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
====== 5. Installing new packages ======

If you want to run some code you wrote, you probably need some language or runtime to do so - eg Python, GCC, Haskell. It might happen to be installed system wide, but when it's not, we use a tool called [[https://nixos.org/|Nix]] to install packages per-user without having version conflicts.

Nix is able to do a lot more things, but for most cases you can use it like so:

<code>
# install 'hello' from nixpkgs
$ nix profile install nixpkgs#hello 
$ hello 
Hello, world!
# it works!

# see everything installed for the current user
$ nix profile list
0 flake:nixpkgs#legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.hello github:NixOS/nixpkgs/98b00b6947a9214381112bdb6f89c25498db4959#legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.hello /nix/store/63l345l7dgcfz789w1y93j1540czafqh-hello-2.12.1

# uninstall 'hello'. note no 'nixpkgs.' this time
$ nix profile remove 0
removing 'flake:nixpkgs#legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.hello'
</code>

To search for packages, go [[https://search.nixos.org/packages|here]]. 

We're using a super small subset of what Nix can do here. It's also able to do things like per-project environments, building your projects, and generating docker images. For more info, see:

  * [[https://nixos.org/guides/how-nix-works.html|How Nix works]], the official explanation of the core concepts
  * [[https://nix.dev/|nix.dev]] - tutorials and recipes for common tasks
  * [[https://zero-to-nix.com/|Zero to Nix]], a more up-to-date but slightly incomplete resource

===== Alternatives =====

The language versions that Nix can install might not be the ones you want, or it might be missing a package you need. In this case, you might want to try an alternative:

  * Rust has [[https://rustup.rs/|rustup]]
  * Node.JS has [[https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm|NVM]]
  * Ruby has [[https://github.com/rvm/rvm|RVM]]
  * [[https://asdf-vm.com/|asdf]] supports many other languages
  * You can just compile it from source and install it somewhere in your home directory.

If you're having problems, feel free to ask an admin.