How to clean-up your system#
Building and running NGI Forge packages and applications leaves different types of files on your system. This page lists what gets created and how to remove it.
Nix Store#
Running any nix command (e.g. nix build, nix run) adds paths to the Nix
store, located in the /nix/store directory, containing all dependencies and
build results. This is a core principle of Nix. It is safe to remove any
paths that are no longer used.
Clean-up command:
nix store gc -v
“result” symlink#
Running the nix build command leaves result symlinks in the directory the
command was run from. These symlinks point to the build result’s store path
in /nix/store.
Clean-up command:
rm -fv result result-*
Container runtime#
Image cache#
Running applications in the container runtime using nix run .#apps.<name>.container leaves container image tarballs in the
$XDG_CACHE_HOME/ngi-forge directory, to be reused on future runs. It is safe
to remove them any time.
Clean-up command:
rm -rfv "${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/ngi-forge"
Podman images#
The container runtime loads built images into podman.
Clean-up command:
podman rmi -f $(podman images --filter "label=ngi-forge=true" -q)
NixOS runtime#
Running applications in the nixos runtime using nix run .#apps.<name>.nixos.vm creates a QEMU disk image, named after the app, in the
directory the command was run from. This image holds the VM’s state (and
therefore the app’s data), and persists across VM runs.
Clean-up command:
rm -fv ./*.qcow2
Package debug builds#
Following the package recipe guide, an
interactive package build environment launched with
nix develop .#pkgs.<package-name> is usually created in a dev directory.
Clean-up command:
rm -rf dev