Silvan Mosberger
e3491c9e40
The status quo of `bash` not being interactive is frustrating for many users,
because trying to use it interactively is just messed up, and
`bashInteractive` is not intuitive and barely discoverable.
This was brought to my (and many others) attention by @stahnma in his
[talk at CfgMgmtCamp 2025](https://cfp.cfgmgmtcamp.org/ghent2025/talk/YUVUTN/),
where he highlighted this as one of the frustrations he ran into when
learning Nix.
Why this is fine:
- No reason for not making interactive the default was given in the original commit (6c6ff6f36f), but probably it was due to the increase in closure size
- The closure size only increases by 6.9MiB (19.5%) today, with the
added dependency on the store paths for readline and ncurses, which
are needed on systems in almost all cases anyways
- If somebody really needs to get a more minimal system, they can use
the newly-introduced `bashNonInteractive` instead now
- Though to apply it consistently, they'll need to do that in an
overlay like
```
final: prev: {
bash = self.bashNonInteractive;
}
```
Or alternatively using the `system.replaceDependencies.replacements`
NixOS option approach.
While there's also other such `*Interactive` packages that could use the
same treatment, `bash` is a great start.
This was already attempted before in
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/151227, but was not continued for
unknown reason.
To avoid stdenv becoming bigger, all uses of bash in the (working)
stdenv's are changed to the explicitly non-interactive version here.
This commit will however still cause a mass rebuild for all packages (and reverse deps)
making use of the default bash.
Nixpkgs is a collection of over 100,000 software packages that can be installed with the Nix package manager. It also implements NixOS, a purely-functional Linux distribution.
Manuals
- NixOS Manual - how to install, configure, and maintain a purely-functional Linux distribution
- Nixpkgs Manual - contributing to Nixpkgs and using programming-language-specific Nix expressions
- Nix Package Manager Manual - how to write Nix expressions (programs), and how to use Nix command line tools
Community
- Discourse Forum
- Matrix Chat
- NixOS Weekly
- Official wiki
- Community-maintained list of ways to get in touch (Discord, Telegram, IRC, etc.)
Other Project Repositories
The sources of all official Nix-related projects are in the NixOS organization on GitHub. Here are some of the main ones:
- Nix - the purely functional package manager
- NixOps - the tool to remotely deploy NixOS machines
- nixos-hardware - NixOS profiles to optimize settings for different hardware
- Nix RFCs - the formal process for making substantial changes to the community
- NixOS homepage - the NixOS.org website
- hydra - our continuous integration system
- NixOS Artwork - NixOS artwork
Continuous Integration and Distribution
Nixpkgs and NixOS are built and tested by our continuous integration system, Hydra.
- Continuous package builds for unstable/master
- Continuous package builds for the NixOS 24.11 release
- Tests for unstable/master
- Tests for the NixOS 24.11 release
Artifacts successfully built with Hydra are published to cache at https://cache.nixos.org/. When successful build and test criteria are met, the Nixpkgs expressions are distributed via Nix channels.
Contributing
Nixpkgs is among the most active projects on GitHub. While thousands of open issues and pull requests might seem a lot at first, it helps consider it in the context of the scope of the project. Nixpkgs describes how to build tens of thousands of pieces of software and implements a Linux distribution. The GitHub Insights page gives a sense of the project activity.
Community contributions are always welcome through GitHub Issues and Pull Requests.
For more information about contributing to the project, please visit the contributing page.
Donations
The infrastructure for NixOS and related projects is maintained by a nonprofit organization, the NixOS Foundation. To ensure the continuity and expansion of the NixOS infrastructure, we are looking for donations to our organization.
You can donate to the NixOS foundation through SEPA bank transfers or by using Open Collective:
License
Nixpkgs is licensed under the MIT License.
Note: MIT license does not apply to the packages built by Nixpkgs, merely to the files in this repository (the Nix expressions, build scripts, NixOS modules, etc.). It also might not apply to patches included in Nixpkgs, which may be derivative works of the packages to which they apply. The aforementioned artifacts are all covered by the licenses of the respective packages.