5 ms·

Redesign of nix command line is a good thing. Nix should be more intuitive. I totally agree that nix is the future of package management.

nikolay 10y ago
Many of the nix switches and commands are non-intuitive. I always have to check the man page, and I'm more often than not surprised by their choices!
- mitchty 10y ago
  They're patterned after rpm generally.
  - nikolay 10y ago
    Which is a poor choice! Picking yum or apt as the model would have been a saner choice! I feel the same way dealing with Arch Linux - being different (read "weird") isn't always better!
    - hk__2 10y ago
      > being different (read "weird") isn't always better! To go further, being different is almost always a bad idea. People are used to how current stuff works; you need a really good reason not to provide the same interface.
      - mitchty 10y ago
        Sure but its not different/weird. I've used rpm for a long time, using nix was more, oh ok so rpm type flags no big deal. It is weird mostly due to exposure to other tools. IIRC nix started out over 10 years ago, well before apt or yum became very widely used.
        nikolay 10y ago
        RPM-based distros are not the most popular, though [0]! [0]: http://distrowatch.com/ http://distrowatch.com/
        mitchty 10y ago
        Sure, now, but was that the case 10 years ago? I'm not arguing its the best choice but more that you need to take into account the age of things. Being exposed to it just now doesn't mean it was created in that situation. I'd say 10 years ago rpm based distributions were the more dominant and emulating rpm was a fine choice.
paperpunk 10y ago
What makes Nix the future of package management? I'm not familiar with it so I don't know! I looked at the web-site and didn't find it clear what it does that Homebrew doesn't, other than being cross-platform (although I recently started using Linuxbrew which has made Homebrew cross-platform-ish for me).
- chaosfox 10y ago
  read this: https://nixos.org/nix/about.html https://nixos.org/nix/about.html I don't know if it is "the future", but it has features that would be very welcome in other package managers.
- sirn 10y ago
  The power of Nix start when you start building your own ~/.nixpkgs/default.nix (but you don't really need to if you don't want to): { packageOverrides = pkgs: with pkgs; rec { all = buildEnv { name = "all"; paths = [ vim fish gitAndTools.gitFull ]; }; }; } This is the Nix package collection. You can install this package with `nix-env -i all`. What does it do? Install vim, install fish, install git. Not much, and easily doable in Homebrew in much fewer keystrokes. Now imagine you decided that you don't like vim and want to go with emacs. You change the paths to `paths = [ emacs fish gitAndTools.gitFull ]`. Run `nix-env -i all` again. What does it do now? It uninstall vim and install emacs. Now that you decided you don't like emacs after all and want to go back to vim. You can just run `nix-env --rollback` and it will happily rollback the change it made to the filesystem made by latest nix-env call, as in, restoring vim at where you expect it to be. This is the declarative nature of Nix. You declare the state you want the package to be (or the whole system, in case of NixOS) and Nix will figure out how to get to that state. default.nix can also do a lot more things, for example, adding custom packages, overriding versions, changing build flags and much more. Let's say one day you need to clone the whole setup to other machine, you only need to copy this default.nix and run `nix-env -i all` on that machine and everything is reproduced in the way you expected. This default.nix can also be per-project, allowing collaborators to share the same packages (and custom packages).
  - 10y ago
nextos 10y ago
I found Guix ones more understandable. Also Guix switch challenge is incredible from a security perspective: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Invoking-guix-challenge.html https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Invoking-... Nix should take those things back. Overall, it's a great package manager.
rokgarbas 10y ago
a redesign of nix command line is on the way. so thins should get easier.
- k__ 10y ago
  how long will this take?
renox 10y ago
>I totally agree that nix is the future of package management. Perhaps, if they clean it up significantly, I think that nix's principles are very sound, but the implementation isn't: it's fine when you are using it as a simple package manager but as soon as you want to do something a bit complex (say building gcc with a different kernel version) you're on your own: 1) half of the documentation makes reference to configuration files which aren't in my version of nix?? 2) there is no real mail/news forum for support/help: no IRC isn't enough.

nikolay 10y ago

Many of the nix switches and commands are non-intuitive. I always have to check the man page, and I'm more often than not surprised by their choices!

mitchty 10y ago
They're patterned after rpm generally.
- nikolay 10y ago
  Which is a poor choice! Picking yum or apt as the model would have been a saner choice! I feel the same way dealing with Arch Linux - being different (read "weird") isn't always better!
  - hk__2 10y ago
    > being different (read "weird") isn't always better! To go further, being different is almost always a bad idea. People are used to how current stuff works; you need a really good reason not to provide the same interface.
    - mitchty 10y ago
      Sure but its not different/weird. I've used rpm for a long time, using nix was more, oh ok so rpm type flags no big deal. It is weird mostly due to exposure to other tools. IIRC nix started out over 10 years ago, well before apt or yum became very widely used.
      - nikolay 10y ago
        RPM-based distros are not the most popular, though [0]! [0]: http://distrowatch.com/ http://distrowatch.com/
        mitchty 10y ago
        Sure, now, but was that the case 10 years ago? I'm not arguing its the best choice but more that you need to take into account the age of things. Being exposed to it just now doesn't mean it was created in that situation. I'd say 10 years ago rpm based distributions were the more dominant and emulating rpm was a fine choice.

paperpunk 10y ago

What makes Nix the future of package management? I'm not familiar with it so I don't know! I looked at the web-site and didn't find it clear what it does that Homebrew doesn't, other than being cross-platform (although I recently started using Linuxbrew which has made Homebrew cross-platform-ish for me).

chaosfox 10y ago
read this: https://nixos.org/nix/about.html https://nixos.org/nix/about.html I don't know if it is "the future", but it has features that would be very welcome in other package managers.
sirn 10y ago
The power of Nix start when you start building your own ~/.nixpkgs/default.nix (but you don't really need to if you don't want to): { packageOverrides = pkgs: with pkgs; rec { all = buildEnv { name = "all"; paths = [ vim fish gitAndTools.gitFull ]; }; }; } This is the Nix package collection. You can install this package with `nix-env -i all`. What does it do? Install vim, install fish, install git. Not much, and easily doable in Homebrew in much fewer keystrokes. Now imagine you decided that you don't like vim and want to go with emacs. You change the paths to `paths = [ emacs fish gitAndTools.gitFull ]`. Run `nix-env -i all` again. What does it do now? It uninstall vim and install emacs. Now that you decided you don't like emacs after all and want to go back to vim. You can just run `nix-env --rollback` and it will happily rollback the change it made to the filesystem made by latest nix-env call, as in, restoring vim at where you expect it to be. This is the declarative nature of Nix. You declare the state you want the package to be (or the whole system, in case of NixOS) and Nix will figure out how to get to that state. default.nix can also do a lot more things, for example, adding custom packages, overriding versions, changing build flags and much more. Let's say one day you need to clone the whole setup to other machine, you only need to copy this default.nix and run `nix-env -i all` on that machine and everything is reproduced in the way you expected. This default.nix can also be per-project, allowing collaborators to share the same packages (and custom packages).
- 10y ago

nextos 10y ago

I found Guix ones more understandable. Also Guix switch challenge is incredible from a security perspective: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Invoking-guix-challenge.html https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Invoking-... Nix should take those things back. Overall, it's a great package manager.

rokgarbas 10y ago

a redesign of nix command line is on the way. so thins should get easier.

k__ 10y ago
how long will this take?

renox 10y ago

>I totally agree that nix is the future of package management. Perhaps, if they clean it up significantly, I think that nix's principles are very sound, but the implementation isn't: it's fine when you are using it as a simple package manager but as soon as you want to do something a bit complex (say building gcc with a different kernel version) you're on your own: 1) half of the documentation makes reference to configuration files which aren't in my version of nix?? 2) there is no real mail/news forum for support/help: no IRC isn't enough.