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by jeremy_flox
210 days ago
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Yeah, it's essentially cached eval, the key being where/how that eval is stored. When you create a Flox environment, we evaluate the Nix expressions once and store the concrete result (ie exact store paths) in FloxHub. The k8s node just fetches that pre-rendered manifest and bind-mounts the packages with no evaluation step at pod startup. It's like the difference between giving the node a recipe to interpret vs. giving it a shopping list of exact items. Faster, safer, and the node doesn't need to know how to cook (evaluate Nix). I don't know, there's a metaphor here somewhere, I'll find it. Only so much room for magic, for sure, but tons of room for efficiency and optimization. |
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Our catalog continuously pre-evaluates nixpkgs in the background. 'flox install' just selects from pre-evaluated packages -- no eval needed, ever. The k8s node fetches the manifest and mounts the packages.
Eval is done once, centrally, continuously. So... even more pre-val'd, so to speak.