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I tried to use nixOS as a desktop system. Using a special command (nix-shell) whenever I needed to do development things (e.g. Rust builds) was not my idea of

I tried to use nixOS as a desktop system. Using a special command (nix-shell) whenever I needed to do development things (e.g. Rust builds) was not my idea of fun. Some other things, like overriding GDM's monitors.xml file, were pretty much impossible to do. Maybe it's better if you just use it as a base for servers / containers.

techdragon 6y ago
Has the container situation improved? Last time I looked (quite some time ago) I couldn’t find an official or community blessed container to base anything on.
- mcint 6y ago
  Nix supports containers as a build target or output format, but the nix tools are considerate (easy to uninstall) so there's no need (& little sense) in putting them in a container. You could run the nix install script in a ubuntu or alpine image. I use Nix on macOS, wishing I could replace all my brew usage with it. Working on a home-manager derived setup. The dev workflow mentioned by tikhonj https://christine.website/blog/how-i-start-nix-2020-03-08 https://christine.website/blog/how-i-start-nix-2020-03-08 (including a "derivation" building a container from the example project). https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/ https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/
- tikhonj 6y ago
  I've used the nixos/nix image from Docker Hub[1] to run some CI scripts using Nix to build my projects. As far as I understand it, it's basically Alpine Linux with the Nix package manager and tools preinstalled, but it worked pretty well for me. [1]: https://hub.docker.com/r/nixos/nix/ https://hub.docker.com/r/nixos/nix/
  - techdragon 6y ago
    This is the sort of thing I was looking for. There may not be much too it, (and as another comment mentioned, the package management tools can output containers) but having a blessed starting point shows a clear signal to potential user that it's not just an afterthought.
- alephu5 6y ago
  A nix derivation can be converted directly into a docker image, you don't need a docker file at all. It's actually very simple and quite intuitive. I wrote a blog post about doing this with python, but it's straightforward to generalise. https://sotelo.dev/blog/nix-for-pythonistas https://sotelo.dev/blog/nix-for-pythonistas
tikhonj 6y ago
> Using a special command (nix-shell) whenever I needed to do development things (e.g. Rust builds) was not my idea of fun. Funny you should mention that, because that's exactly what got me using Nix everywhere :). I've always hated installing tools and libraries globally—what if I need a different version for a future project?—so I like tools that sandbox as much as possible like virtualenv, cargo, cabal... etc. But these tools are all language-specific and have their own limitations (especially around native libraries and dependencies written in other languages). nix-shell gives me the equivalent of virtualenv that works for everything. I can have a single sandboxed environment even if my project uses a bunch of different languages and I can manage everything in a reproducible, low-overhead fashion. No more worrying about making a mess by installing tools or packages globally. Then, once I got really used to that, I spent some time setting up direnv[1] and lorri[2]—both of which are themselves managed with Nix, of course!—so that my environment gets automatically configured as soon as I enter a project directory without needing to call nix-shell explicitly. To be honest, the experience is still a bit rough, but it works well enough day-to-day that I have my reproducible sandbox cake and eat it in an mostly frictionless way too :). [1]: https://direnv.net/ https://direnv.net/ [2]: https://github.com/target/lorri https://github.com/target/lorri
- indemnity 6y ago
  Out of interest, how does this work if using something like Visual Studio Code or some other IDE?
  - callahad 6y ago
    I've had sufficient success cd'ing into the project directory, activating my nix-shell, and then launching VS Code from inside that shell. In which case it inherits the shell's environment and most things work as expected. There's surely a better way to do it, but I tend to prefer vim + lots of terminals over VS Code, so I haven't looked too closely at that workflow.
  - GrantZvolsky 6y ago
    edit: this is how my vscode is configured using nix on top of Xubuntu: vscode is installed globally using the buildEnv-based declarative user environment approach (https://gist.github.com/lheckemann/402e61e8e53f136f239ecd8c17ab1deb https://gist.github.com/lheckemann/402e61e8e53f136f239ecd8c1...). Then in individual projects I include language-specific dependencies such as dotnet-sdk_3 or google-cloud-sdk.
soraminazuki 6y ago
> Some other things, like overriding GDM's monitors.xml file, were pretty much impossible to do. Quite the contrary. Nix makes it easy to override contents of files, even those that are part of a package. Some things to look for are: "mkForce" for NixOS modules; "override", "overrideAttrs", "symlinkJoin", and "meta.priority" for Nix packages.

techdragon 6y ago

Has the container situation improved? Last time I looked (quite some time ago) I couldn’t find an official or community blessed container to base anything on.

mcint 6y ago
Nix supports containers as a build target or output format, but the nix tools are considerate (easy to uninstall) so there's no need (& little sense) in putting them in a container. You could run the nix install script in a ubuntu or alpine image. I use Nix on macOS, wishing I could replace all my brew usage with it. Working on a home-manager derived setup. The dev workflow mentioned by tikhonj https://christine.website/blog/how-i-start-nix-2020-03-08 https://christine.website/blog/how-i-start-nix-2020-03-08 (including a "derivation" building a container from the example project). https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/ https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/
tikhonj 6y ago
I've used the nixos/nix image from Docker Hub[1] to run some CI scripts using Nix to build my projects. As far as I understand it, it's basically Alpine Linux with the Nix package manager and tools preinstalled, but it worked pretty well for me. [1]: https://hub.docker.com/r/nixos/nix/ https://hub.docker.com/r/nixos/nix/
- techdragon 6y ago
  This is the sort of thing I was looking for. There may not be much too it, (and as another comment mentioned, the package management tools can output containers) but having a blessed starting point shows a clear signal to potential user that it's not just an afterthought.
alephu5 6y ago
A nix derivation can be converted directly into a docker image, you don't need a docker file at all. It's actually very simple and quite intuitive. I wrote a blog post about doing this with python, but it's straightforward to generalise. https://sotelo.dev/blog/nix-for-pythonistas https://sotelo.dev/blog/nix-for-pythonistas

tikhonj 6y ago

> Using a special command (nix-shell) whenever I needed to do development things (e.g. Rust builds) was not my idea of fun. Funny you should mention that, because that's exactly what got me using Nix everywhere :). I've always hated installing tools and libraries globally—what if I need a different version for a future project?—so I like tools that sandbox as much as possible like virtualenv, cargo, cabal... etc. But these tools are all language-specific and have their own limitations (especially around native libraries and dependencies written in other languages). nix-shell gives me the equivalent of virtualenv that works for everything. I can have a single sandboxed environment even if my project uses a bunch of different languages and I can manage everything in a reproducible, low-overhead fashion. No more worrying about making a mess by installing tools or packages globally. Then, once I got really used to that, I spent some time setting up direnv[1] and lorri[2]—both of which are themselves managed with Nix, of course!—so that my environment gets automatically configured as soon as I enter a project directory without needing to call nix-shell explicitly. To be honest, the experience is still a bit rough, but it works well enough day-to-day that I have my reproducible sandbox cake and eat it in an mostly frictionless way too :). [1]: https://direnv.net/ https://direnv.net/ [2]: https://github.com/target/lorri https://github.com/target/lorri

indemnity 6y ago
Out of interest, how does this work if using something like Visual Studio Code or some other IDE?
- callahad 6y ago
  I've had sufficient success cd'ing into the project directory, activating my nix-shell, and then launching VS Code from inside that shell. In which case it inherits the shell's environment and most things work as expected. There's surely a better way to do it, but I tend to prefer vim + lots of terminals over VS Code, so I haven't looked too closely at that workflow.
- GrantZvolsky 6y ago
  edit: this is how my vscode is configured using nix on top of Xubuntu: vscode is installed globally using the buildEnv-based declarative user environment approach (https://gist.github.com/lheckemann/402e61e8e53f136f239ecd8c17ab1deb https://gist.github.com/lheckemann/402e61e8e53f136f239ecd8c1...). Then in individual projects I include language-specific dependencies such as dotnet-sdk_3 or google-cloud-sdk.

soraminazuki 6y ago

> Some other things, like overriding GDM's monitors.xml file, were pretty much impossible to do. Quite the contrary. Nix makes it easy to override contents of files, even those that are part of a package. Some things to look for are: "mkForce" for NixOS modules; "override", "overrideAttrs", "symlinkJoin", and "meta.priority" for Nix packages.