Archive of posts on Apr 16, 2026
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Ways of reducing mass rebuilds in Nix without changing Nix
One serious problem with Nix is the amount of mass rebuilds happening in Nixpkgs every time some package with many dependents gets an update. I thought about three ideas to reduce mass rebuilds: store path replacements, separating compiling and linking, and ditching check phases. Each of them has some degree of impracticality.