[Other OS] Package managers installed by nix break all nix symlinks

[ShalokShalom]

Hi there :)

1. Download nix with your shell script.
2. Install npm or another package manager.
3. Use this package manager by installing any package.
4. All your symlinks in /nix/store break
5. Accept the assumption that a lot of people will try out your package manager, lets say because their language is outdated in the distro they use.
6. Accept that the default configuration currently breaks the whole nix experience to them within two casual commands.

[edolstra]

You'll have to be more specific than "See that everything breaks".

[ShalokShalom]

Done (I assumed that is obvious based on the title of this issue)

[dtzWill]

It still seems unclear what the issue is, sorry.

In general I wouldn't count on language-specific package managers working especially well (although some do), and anyway these sorts of problems should be reported over on Nixpkgs.

That said, nothing other than nix itself should be changing anything in the /nix directory -- and it's very rare for derivations to symlink outside of the store (only done in a few situations intended for use with NixOS I believe)-- what symlinks are being broken? And.. how? :/

If you think you can't be clearer with your description, consider putting together an explicit example so folks can see what you mean-- even if you consider the issue more general than a specific example may capture.

[dtzWill]

Also-- Is this a duplicate of #2051? (it seems to be?)

[ShalokShalom]

Yes, this is a duplicate of the mentioned issue, I closed that one yesterday and reopened this one here to avoid confusion.

As mentioned in the name of the issue - as already stated - breaks this ALL symlinks in the nix environment.

So including the nix tools itself.

This is a heavy issue imho and a couple of people in the IRC come up with different ideas, like multi-user setup by default and root installation.

I experience very few significant issues with any package manager from any language, while the first try to use nix broke it completely.

Without any mention that this is the case, to make the situation even more critical.

[ShalokShalom]

It seems like I do get broken symlinks even after a complete reinstallation, eg deleting the whole /nix folder and doing a reinstall via the script that you offer on your homepage.

So this is probably unrelated, while the essential issue is still the same, Nix does currently not support any protection from illegal installations done by other package managers into it's store.

Someone suggested in the IRC, that the next version of Nix ships with an optional flag, which allows to install with a daemon, which supervises that.

I suggest to set this flag on by default, any issues with that?

[shlevy]

@ShalokShalom The flag is already on by default on master, we turned it off when backporting this to maintenance releases.

[ShalokShalom]

Oh fine, great.

The information I got is that 2.0.1 becomes this flag and it will be default in 2.1 maybe.

So which maintenance release do you mean?

[shlevy]

2.0.1 is the maintenance release in question, yes. It will be default in 2.1.

[shlevy]

2.0.1 is already out, by the way.