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I've always kept my usage of Nix language to a minimum and found it to be a joy every time. But it's no wonder you'd have trouble on something that humongous. W

by lvass 5y ago

I've always kept my usage of Nix language to a minimum and found it to be a joy every time. But it's no wonder you'd have trouble on something that humongous. Why did it get so large?

exdsq 5y ago
Nix can do everything and that's an issue - suddenly the CI servers, AWS deployments, build servers, testing, linting, dev package management, dev system environments, and more are all written in Nix packages. You need to write nix bindings. You need to add nix caching. And, as is fitting with a functional language, it can be beautifully (read: painfully) abstract. Some of the guys on the team were contributors to Nix so it wasn't like we weren't following best practices either. I'm sure if everyone was willing to put in weeks/months of effort it'll be as fun to use as Haskell, but Nix isn't the thing I do so I need something simple - docker/docker-compose works perfectly well for that.
- svenhy 5y ago
  No, Nix can't do everything, it can do the one thing it does, mainly it maintains immutable paths and allows to define derivations of any number of those paths using namespaced execution of build scripts. All this is controlled using expression in the Nix language, which is well suited for the intended purpose. It is in important aspect the opposite of Haskell. Nix does so well what it does, that it is easy to use it where better solution exists (looking at you NixOps) So I agree with some parts of your criticism, on the other hand if Nix is be used to do the sensible subset of "CI servers, AWS deployments, build servers, testing, linting, dev package management, dev system environments, and more are", that would be great. And what that subset is depends heavily on the given circumstances. For me, being able to derive the "CI servers, AWS deployments, build servers, testing, linting, dev package management, dev system environments" things from a single source of truth, actually does sell Nix pretty nicely. When approaching a complex, multi-component source repository, with the requirement for dev-environments, CI builds and generation of production ready Docker-images, a careful and not over-eager Nix build, seems a sensible choice, given that the layered nature of Dockerfiles and docker-compose obscures the DAG nature of built artifacts and dependencies. Nix also doesn't build anything by itself, it merely invokes low-level build tools in isolated environments that only contain the specified dependencies. Sure, when using Nix one is forced to explicitly state the dependencies of each (sub-component-) build-step, that results in more code than a bunch of RUN ... calls in Dockerfiles. Both approaches have their sweetspots. An investment into learning Nix is done once. And you are completely right, that refactoring to a Nix based build takes weeks in a serious legacy software project. I wonder myself, if this will be worth it. Currently, I think that might be the case, and that part of the weeks put into the build are not due to Nix and would have been necessary for Docker-based builds, too, and also one can do a lot of stuff much easier with Nix, which leads to "feature-creep" like "oh let me add this preconfigured vim/emacs/vs-code into the build env" that one would probably not do if it weren't so easy to customize everything with overlays and overrides. But that is a good thing, and it is much better to have a capable tool and critical discussions with colleagues to limit the usage of that tool, than the other way around. Heck, I remeber when we switched to a Maven build, and had a build with all bells and whistles. That took weeks, too, and all the generated artifacts, like source code documentation sites, were probably a waste if time to implement. I am not sure if that proves or disproves powerful, declarative and modular build systems. Dockerfiles and docker-compose.yamls have a learning curve too, but more importantly, if you have to invest more time per build maintenance than with a Nix based build, it is only a matter time until that costs more than the nix approach.
  - temptemptemp111 5y ago
    "CI servers, AWS deployments, build servers, testing, linting, dev package management, dev system environments, and more are..." - Why can't any distro do this? They already do... People want to be lazy, but if they weren't they would stop adding more abstraction layers. Alpine (host & guest/container) + podman/docker + k8s/nomad + your custom software... Why the need for anything else? And each piece is replaceable in the event of failure/deprecation.
- lvass 5y ago
  Sounds like your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. Would it be nicer if you just used Nix to build the application and a shell, in the simplest possible manner?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - exdsq 5y ago
    This is totally fine and I like it, my worry is scope creep once it’s in. Nix repl to experiment with new languages is really cool. Reversing updates to my OS is amazing. If I could have a rule that that is the limit - personal dev environments - but with additional support for docker then I’d be very happy.
aspaceman 5y ago
I'm not the author and my opinion might not be warranted, but I would guess: * When you modify your local nix file, there's only a couple things you need to change. It stays small. You can keep track of all these changes because they're in your head. * The company needs a lot of little changes here and there so they build up. Foobar needs rooster v1,2 while Barfoom needs rooster v0,5. A lot different than managaging a users config. No longer possible to squeeze all the details into one brain. This isn't to say Nix would be bad at handling any of these things. But I would agree with the OP. I have trouble teaching new devs how APT and shell work. Couldn't even imagine trying to explain Nix syntax to them. The more Nix is used for, the more likely a dev will have to touch it. And teaching someone who doesn't care Nix is like teaching someone who doesn't care about Makefiles / Git. Doesn't work. They just get mad and say it's too complicated.
rgoulter 5y ago
> I've always kept my usage of Nix language to a minimum and found it to be a joy every time. The trouble is, it's more significant to consider what the pain is in the worst case. e.g. Two things which count against Nix: With stuff like Docker, I can get away with not really understanding what's going on, and have a quick + dirty fix. And with Nix, the community is smaller, so it's less likely you'll find an answer to the problem you're having right now. I worked at a company where the DevOps team used Nix for the production/staging. For local development (and ephemeral development deployments), the dev team came up with a docker-compose setup. -- That said, there was at least one case where the devs contributed to the Nix stuff by way of copy-pasting to setup a new deployment.

by lvass 5y ago

I've always kept my usage of Nix language to a minimum and found it to be a joy every time. But it's no wonder you'd have trouble on something that humongous. Why did it get so large?

exdsq 5y ago

Nix can do everything and that's an issue - suddenly the CI servers, AWS deployments, build servers, testing, linting, dev package management, dev system environments, and more are all written in Nix packages. You need to write nix bindings. You need to add nix caching. And, as is fitting with a functional language, it can be beautifully (read: painfully) abstract. Some of the guys on the team were contributors to Nix so it wasn't like we weren't following best practices either. I'm sure if everyone was willing to put in weeks/months of effort it'll be as fun to use as Haskell, but Nix isn't the thing I do so I need something simple - docker/docker-compose works perfectly well for that.

svenhy 5y ago
No, Nix can't do everything, it can do the one thing it does, mainly it maintains immutable paths and allows to define derivations of any number of those paths using namespaced execution of build scripts. All this is controlled using expression in the Nix language, which is well suited for the intended purpose. It is in important aspect the opposite of Haskell. Nix does so well what it does, that it is easy to use it where better solution exists (looking at you NixOps) So I agree with some parts of your criticism, on the other hand if Nix is be used to do the sensible subset of "CI servers, AWS deployments, build servers, testing, linting, dev package management, dev system environments, and more are", that would be great. And what that subset is depends heavily on the given circumstances. For me, being able to derive the "CI servers, AWS deployments, build servers, testing, linting, dev package management, dev system environments" things from a single source of truth, actually does sell Nix pretty nicely. When approaching a complex, multi-component source repository, with the requirement for dev-environments, CI builds and generation of production ready Docker-images, a careful and not over-eager Nix build, seems a sensible choice, given that the layered nature of Dockerfiles and docker-compose obscures the DAG nature of built artifacts and dependencies. Nix also doesn't build anything by itself, it merely invokes low-level build tools in isolated environments that only contain the specified dependencies. Sure, when using Nix one is forced to explicitly state the dependencies of each (sub-component-) build-step, that results in more code than a bunch of RUN ... calls in Dockerfiles. Both approaches have their sweetspots. An investment into learning Nix is done once. And you are completely right, that refactoring to a Nix based build takes weeks in a serious legacy software project. I wonder myself, if this will be worth it. Currently, I think that might be the case, and that part of the weeks put into the build are not due to Nix and would have been necessary for Docker-based builds, too, and also one can do a lot of stuff much easier with Nix, which leads to "feature-creep" like "oh let me add this preconfigured vim/emacs/vs-code into the build env" that one would probably not do if it weren't so easy to customize everything with overlays and overrides. But that is a good thing, and it is much better to have a capable tool and critical discussions with colleagues to limit the usage of that tool, than the other way around. Heck, I remeber when we switched to a Maven build, and had a build with all bells and whistles. That took weeks, too, and all the generated artifacts, like source code documentation sites, were probably a waste if time to implement. I am not sure if that proves or disproves powerful, declarative and modular build systems. Dockerfiles and docker-compose.yamls have a learning curve too, but more importantly, if you have to invest more time per build maintenance than with a Nix based build, it is only a matter time until that costs more than the nix approach.
- temptemptemp111 5y ago
  "CI servers, AWS deployments, build servers, testing, linting, dev package management, dev system environments, and more are..." - Why can't any distro do this? They already do... People want to be lazy, but if they weren't they would stop adding more abstraction layers. Alpine (host & guest/container) + podman/docker + k8s/nomad + your custom software... Why the need for anything else? And each piece is replaceable in the event of failure/deprecation.
lvass 5y ago
Sounds like your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. Would it be nicer if you just used Nix to build the application and a shell, in the simplest possible manner?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- exdsq 5y ago
  This is totally fine and I like it, my worry is scope creep once it’s in. Nix repl to experiment with new languages is really cool. Reversing updates to my OS is amazing. If I could have a rule that that is the limit - personal dev environments - but with additional support for docker then I’d be very happy.

aspaceman 5y ago

I'm not the author and my opinion might not be warranted, but I would guess: * When you modify your local nix file, there's only a couple things you need to change. It stays small. You can keep track of all these changes because they're in your head. * The company needs a lot of little changes here and there so they build up. Foobar needs rooster v1,2 while Barfoom needs rooster v0,5. A lot different than managaging a users config. No longer possible to squeeze all the details into one brain. This isn't to say Nix would be bad at handling any of these things. But I would agree with the OP. I have trouble teaching new devs how APT and shell work. Couldn't even imagine trying to explain Nix syntax to them. The more Nix is used for, the more likely a dev will have to touch it. And teaching someone who doesn't care Nix is like teaching someone who doesn't care about Makefiles / Git. Doesn't work. They just get mad and say it's too complicated.

rgoulter 5y ago

> I've always kept my usage of Nix language to a minimum and found it to be a joy every time. The trouble is, it's more significant to consider what the pain is in the worst case. e.g. Two things which count against Nix: With stuff like Docker, I can get away with not really understanding what's going on, and have a quick + dirty fix. And with Nix, the community is smaller, so it's less likely you'll find an answer to the problem you're having right now. I worked at a company where the DevOps team used Nix for the production/staging. For local development (and ephemeral development deployments), the dev team came up with a docker-compose setup. -- That said, there was at least one case where the devs contributed to the Nix stuff by way of copy-pasting to setup a new deployment.