How do you containerize stuff you install from source in a way that you can completely remove later?

Linux@lemmy.ml – 43 points – 12 months ago

I'm doing a bunch of AI stuff that needs compiling to try various unrelated apps. I'm making a mess of config files and extras. I've been using distrobox and conda. How could I do this better? Chroot? Different user logins for extra home directories? Groups? Most of the packages need access to CUDA and localhost. I would like to keep them out of my main home directory.

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NixOS containers could do what OP's asking for, but it'll be trickier with just nix (on other distro). It'll handle build dependencies and such, but you'll still need to keep your home or other directories clean some other way.

OP could use flakes to create these dev environments and clean them up without a trace once done.

Any files created by programs running in the dev environments will remain.

nix-collect-garbage

Does NOT delete any files that were written to, for example, ~/.local or ~/.config from dev shell.

One of OP's problems was,

I’m making a mess of config files and extras.