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NixOS Reproducible Builds: minimal installation ISO successfully independently rebuilt
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this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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I thought NixOS was already reproducible, like, isn't that the whole point? What's the big deal here, and why is it a "great achievement" - does the Linux world now completely change? Does this revolutionize how Linux ISOs are built?
I think the ISO specifically wasn't reproducible but now it is.
Nix packages are probably what you're thinking of. They are reproducible
In general nix packages are not reproducible in the sense that the output will be bit-for-bit identical. When a package is built on two different machines, nix will run the same commands, with the same environment variables, using identical inputs (e.g. source tarballs). However there are various ways build systems, compilers etc can still be non-deterministic, and this effort is about fixing that.
A large amount aren't but, OTOH, a large amount also are because Nix does almost everything it can to set up an environment without easily preventable sources of non-determinism such as general filesystem access, networking or other means of communication with some uncontrolled system.
Reading this thread I am even more confused about Linux in general.
If you have questions, feel free to ask.