Provide official NixOS docker image to bootstrap install from other distributions

[bchallenor]

IMO, an official NixOS Docker image would be the best way to solve #9884, to bootstrap nixos-install on a non-NixOS host.

There is already a Nix image on the Docker Hub, as built by this Dockerfile. For NixOS, though, it probably makes more sense to build the image on NixOS (rather than via a Dockerfile), because NixOS knows how to build itself already.

But this creates a bootstrapping problem for people who don't have NixOS yet, so it would be nice if such an image was published somewhere publically.

Hydra is already building a NixOS container tarball. Would it be possible to:

• Push this image to Docker Hub as part of the release process, or
• Host a Docker registry on nixos.org to make released images accessible to Docker, or
• Release the container tarball alongside the other installation artifacts, so that users can manually import it via docker import

[bchallenor]

I've seen those tools before, but I would prefer "simple to understand/audit" (but more manual) over "one click install" (but a magic black box), especially as they are unofficial projects.

(Also, my use case is a little different as I'd like to bootstrap a second install, not take over the original distribution.)

In the meantime, I'm working on a Dockerfile to build an image that will contain the closure of nixos-install. But I think it would be easier to build this from NixOS itself.

[stale]

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