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Actually, being able to build projects much easier from GitHub is the sole reason why I'm currently using Arch as my main OS. Building a project is just a shel

Actually, being able to build projects much easier from GitHub is the sole reason why I'm currently using Arch as my main OS. Building a project is just a shell script with a couple of defined functions. Quite literally. I really admire NixOS's philosophy of pushing the boundaries as a distro where everything, including configurations and modifications, can be done in a reproducible manner. They're basically trying to automate the review process down the line, which is absurdly complex as a challenge. And given stability and desktop integrations improve over time, I really think that Nix has the potential to be the base for easily forkable distributions. Building a live/bootable distro will be so much easier, as everything is just a set of configuration files anyways.

takeda 5y ago
This is slightly different thing. Nix and NixOS are trying to solve multiple things, and that's what it might be a bit confusing. Many people don't realize that, but if you get for example mentioned project from github and I do and we compile it on our machines we get a different file (it'll work the same but it won't be exactly the same). Say we use the same dependencies, we still will get a different files, because maybe you used slightly different version of the compiler, or maybe those dependencies were compiled with different dependencies or compilers. Maybe the project while building inserts a date, or pulls some file. There are million ways that we would end up with different files. The goal here is to get bit by bit identical files and it's like a Holy Grail in this area. NixOS just appears to achieved that and all packages that come with the system are now fully reproducible.
- eru 5y ago
  A rich source of non-reproducibility is non-determinism introduced by parallel building. Preserving parallel execution, but arriving at deterministic outputs, is an interesting and ongoing challenge. With a rich mathematical structure, too.

takeda 5y ago

This is slightly different thing. Nix and NixOS are trying to solve multiple things, and that's what it might be a bit confusing. Many people don't realize that, but if you get for example mentioned project from github and I do and we compile it on our machines we get a different file (it'll work the same but it won't be exactly the same). Say we use the same dependencies, we still will get a different files, because maybe you used slightly different version of the compiler, or maybe those dependencies were compiled with different dependencies or compilers. Maybe the project while building inserts a date, or pulls some file. There are million ways that we would end up with different files. The goal here is to get bit by bit identical files and it's like a Holy Grail in this area. NixOS just appears to achieved that and all packages that come with the system are now fully reproducible.

eru 5y ago
A rich source of non-reproducibility is non-determinism introduced by parallel building. Preserving parallel execution, but arriving at deterministic outputs, is an interesting and ongoing challenge. With a rich mathematical structure, too.