# World domination plan
## Relative rpath for binaries
Change nix to setup a build environment containing all libraries at `lib` by the means of `ln -s` so we don't have to patchelf around afterwards
(maybe still do the conventional way too to figure out missing pkgconfig files etc.)
Problems: elf file format to interpreter doesn't expand $ORIGIN, so binaries still wouldn't be portable

## Portable systemd services
Drop portable systemd services into `$out` as well -> **We'd have portable, self-contained services**

This also solves the problem of us currently whitelisting upstream systemd units and putting them in modules, instead of just using the upstream version directly. This way we
stay more in sync with upstream.

Let the nixos module system then just extend those via drop-ins

## Block store
Figure out what technology we want to use to translate input hashes to output hashes, and how to store and distribute content blocks.

We really want to have a content-adressed store of some sorts, to dedup and facilitate distribution

Requires binary pkg reproducibility of some sorts, luckily we're quite far with that already

Very much related with the 'intensional model' of Eeelco's PhD thesis

Ideally, we could just mount the whole system from that store, and have block level deduplication of all instances of drvs across the whole system :-)

### IPFS
We could use the IPFS "filesystem" layer, and the signatures there to pull do parts of the resolving.
We'd need to support multiple signature(s) and sources though.

IPFS's block layer seems to be a good candidate as well, as it caches what is requested and stores it locally, although waiting for timeouts on 404 is a bit fugly.

### Casync
Its concept of manifests, and simply allowing a multitude of stores to fetch from might fit better, although we'd need some way of locally fetching what we want to have, and a concept of garbage collecting it, too.

## NixOS cleanup
Get rid of 90% of the /activate code that is involved with putting `.service`
files into `/etc` which is now unncessery

`/activate` is currently responsible for setting up `/etc`
including `/etc/systemd/system` which contain _all_ the unit files of NixOS

We can probably replace the generation of
systemd unit files either with `man systemd.generators` or
`systemd-tmpfiles`.

`systemd.generators` are early-boot scripts (activation scripts) that generate systemd units specifically.

`systemd-tmpfiles` creates volatile files at early boot. Someone already made a PR to generate `/etc` using it
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/47453
http://0pointer.net/blog/projects/stateless.html

### Documentation about the various activation script phases

`switch-to-configuration` currently manually keeps track of what units to stop or start. However
this functionality is built into systemd....

 
 systemctl isolate default.target

Gnome3 is restarted when you do this.... Not sure yet why. Ask Lennart....

Currently, the `/activate` script is built up modularily using.
Lets find all occurences of this in the codebase, and look
how to replace with systemd-equivalents.

       system.activationScripts
           A set of shell script fragments that are executed when a NixOS system
           configuration is activated. Examples are updating /etc, creating
           accounts, and so on. Since these are executed every time you boot the
           system or run nixos-rebuild, it's important that they are idempotent and
           fast.

           Type: attribute set of unspecifieds

           Default: { }

           Example:

               { stdio = {
                   text = ''
                     # Needed by some programs.
                     ln -sfn /proc/self/fd /dev/fd
                     ln -sfn /proc/self/fd/0 /dev/stdin
                     ln -sfn /proc/self/fd/1 /dev/stdout
                     ln -sfn /proc/self/fd/2 /dev/stderr
                   '';
                   deps = [];
                 };
               }

           Declared by:
               <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/system/activation/activation-script.nix>

#### Activation script snippet stdio:

#### Activation script snippet binsh:

#### Activation script snippet domain:

#### Activation script snippet users:
* calls `update-users-groups.pl users-groups.json`
* Can be replaced with `sysusers.d` ?
* Has some remark about "DO NOT USE FOR NON-SYSTEM USERS"
- Research why

#### Activation script snippet groups:
* Replace with `sysusers.d`

#### Activation script snippet etc:
* Replace with `systemd-tmpfiles`

#### Activation script snippet hostname:
* Replace wiht `systemd-hostnamed`

#### Activation script snippet specialfs:
* figure out what this does