3 ms·

Agreed, but perhaps they should officially adopt home-manager then? It felt strange to me that the best way to be using nix was a separate community project.

tnzm 6y ago
I don't use nix-env or home-manager. On my NixOS workstation everything (outside of nix-shells) is installed via environment.systemPackages. And I do wish there was an easy way to add stuff to install packages without rebuilding the whole system - I guess that's what nix-env is for but if I went with that I would the "single editable config file that you can put in VCS" aspect. I think nix-env uses profiles, which are implemented collection of symlinks to the Nix store - guess I could still version those...?
- danieldk 6y ago
  https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#sec-declarative-package-management https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#sec-declarative-pac...
- chriswarbo 6y ago
  You can define a package that contains a bunch of other things, e.g. I use packages like 'devCli', 'netGui', etc. (I actually put these in my systemPackages on NixOS and nix-darwin, but they would also work with nix-env) http://chriswarbo.net/git/nix-config/git/branches/master/overrides/metaPackages.nix.raw.html http://chriswarbo.net/git/nix-config/git/branches/master/ove...
otabdeveloper4 6y ago
At the moment the happy path for Nix is using it in the same space that Docker is used now - for providing reproducible dev/prod environments for server backends. (And in fact Docker and Nix complement and play nice with each other.) You could theoretically use Nix for managing user apps too, but that's a niche use case and (as you found out) not in a working state.
- jpe90 6y ago
  So for the happy path, are you declaring the entire development toolchain on a project by project basis? Any chance you have some recommended resources that show the way you're using it? I was hoping to use it for Haskell but I'd love to see a guide targeted to new users that shows what you're describing.
  - otabdeveloper4 6y ago
    Yeah, each project has its own default.nix that might look something like this: { pkgs ? import (fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/cd63096.tar.gz") { } } : with pkgs; let mypackage = callPackage ./mypackage.nix { stdenv = stdenv; python = python3; }; in dockerTools.buildImage { contents = [ mypackage ]; } You then write a package definition in mypackage.nix, following the template of packaging things in nixpkgs. (Dev environments work in a similar fashion except with mkShell instead of dockerTools.buildImage.) I haven't used Nix flakes but I think it develops this simple idea further.

tnzm 6y ago

I don't use nix-env or home-manager. On my NixOS workstation everything (outside of nix-shells) is installed via environment.systemPackages. And I do wish there was an easy way to add stuff to install packages without rebuilding the whole system - I guess that's what nix-env is for but if I went with that I would the "single editable config file that you can put in VCS" aspect. I think nix-env uses profiles, which are implemented collection of symlinks to the Nix store - guess I could still version those...?

danieldk 6y ago
https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#sec-declarative-package-management https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#sec-declarative-pac...
chriswarbo 6y ago
You can define a package that contains a bunch of other things, e.g. I use packages like 'devCli', 'netGui', etc. (I actually put these in my systemPackages on NixOS and nix-darwin, but they would also work with nix-env) http://chriswarbo.net/git/nix-config/git/branches/master/overrides/metaPackages.nix.raw.html http://chriswarbo.net/git/nix-config/git/branches/master/ove...

otabdeveloper4 6y ago

At the moment the happy path for Nix is using it in the same space that Docker is used now - for providing reproducible dev/prod environments for server backends. (And in fact Docker and Nix complement and play nice with each other.) You could theoretically use Nix for managing user apps too, but that's a niche use case and (as you found out) not in a working state.

jpe90 6y ago
So for the happy path, are you declaring the entire development toolchain on a project by project basis? Any chance you have some recommended resources that show the way you're using it? I was hoping to use it for Haskell but I'd love to see a guide targeted to new users that shows what you're describing.
- otabdeveloper4 6y ago
  Yeah, each project has its own default.nix that might look something like this: { pkgs ? import (fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/cd63096.tar.gz") { } } : with pkgs; let mypackage = callPackage ./mypackage.nix { stdenv = stdenv; python = python3; }; in dockerTools.buildImage { contents = [ mypackage ]; } You then write a package definition in mypackage.nix, following the template of packaging things in nixpkgs. (Dev environments work in a similar fashion except with mkShell instead of dockerTools.buildImage.) I haven't used Nix flakes but I think it develops this simple idea further.