diff-closures

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Note: this command's interface is based heavily around installables, which you may want to read about first (nix --help).

Examples

• Show what got added and removed between two versions of the NixOS system profile:

  # nix store diff-closures /nix/var/nix/profiles/system-655-link /nix/var/nix/profiles/system-658-link
  acpi-call: 2020-04-07-5.8.16 → 2020-04-07-5.8.18
  baloo-widgets: 20.08.1 → 20.08.2
  bluez-qt: +12.6 KiB
  dolphin: 20.08.1 → 20.08.2, +13.9 KiB
  kdeconnect: 20.08.2 → ∅, -6597.8 KiB
  kdeconnect-kde: ∅ → 20.08.2, +6599.7 KiB
  …

Description

This command shows the differences between the two closures before and after with respect to the addition, removal, or version change of packages, as well as changes in store path sizes.

For each package name in the two closures (where a package name is defined as the name component of a store path excluding the version), it returns information about the change in the set of versions of the package, and the change in the size of the store paths.

If the package does not exist in either the before or after closures, it is represented using ∅ (empty set) on the appropriate side of the arrow. If a package has an empty version string, the version is rendered as ε (epsilon).

There may be multiple versions of a package in each closure. In that case, only the changed versions are shown. Thus,

1.2, 1.3 → 1.4

leaves open the possibility that there are other versions (e.g. 1.1) that exist in both closures.

Regular output

The regular output prints lines like this:

dolphin: 20.08.1 → 20.08.2, +13.9 KiB

No size change is shown if it's below the 8 KiB threshold.

JSON output

With --json, the output is in a JSON representation suitable for automatic processing by other tools. The resulting object will contain a schema key specifying the version of the output structure, and a packages key listing the diff information for each package in both closures.

The printed result looks like this:

{
  "packages": {
    "zlib": {
      "sizeDelta": 118856,
      "versionsAfter": [
        "1.3.1"
      ],
      "versionsBefore": [
        "1.3"
      ]
    }
    // ...
  },
  "schema": "lix-closure-diff-v1"
}

)""