Options

The following options are allowed for all nix-store operations, but may not always have an effect.

• --add-root path

  Causes the result of a realisation (--realise and --force-realise) to be registered as a root of the garbage collector. path will be created as a symlink to the resulting store path. In addition, a uniquely named symlink to path will be created in /nix/var/nix/gcroots/auto/. For instance,

  $ nix-store --add-root /home/eelco/bla/result --realise ...
  
  $ ls -l /nix/var/nix/gcroots/auto
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 ... 2005-03-13 21:10 dn54lcypm8f8... -> /home/eelco/bla/result
  
  $ ls -l /home/eelco/bla/result
  lrwxrwxrwx    1 ... 2005-03-13 21:10 /home/eelco/bla/result -> /nix/store/1r11343n6qd4...-f-spot-0.0.10
  

  Thus, when /home/eelco/bla/result is removed, the GC root in the auto directory becomes a dangling symlink and will be ignored by the collector.

  Warning

  Note that it is not possible to move or rename GC roots, since the symlink in the auto directory will still point to the old location.

  If there are multiple results, then multiple symlinks will be created by sequentially numbering symlinks beyond the first one (e.g., foo, foo-2, foo-3, and so on).