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As TFA itself answers, "no". But I can give a different reason: nix is too much of a barrier of entry, relative to Docker. Docker might not be simple; there's
by kortex 5y ago
As TFA itself answers, "no". But I can give a different reason: nix is too much of a barrier of entry, relative to Docker.
Docker might not be simple; there's a lot of moving parts to manage, some hidden gotchas, and networks are a mess. But it's comparatively easy, and once you bake an image, it's pretty simple. Dockerfiles are basically just sh. Package managers are the usual suspects. Images are easy to distribute. It's very familiar.
Nix is not easy. It's a new syntax to learn, it's a new way of building, it's an entirely new way of thinking about the problem. But in the end, it does simplify packaging in the Rich Hickey sense of the easy/simple dichotomy. No braiding of packages and shared libs. But using Nix is not so simple. There's all kinds of bindings and bodges and bespoke shims to make it all work.
History tends to show that easy+non-simple things beat out simple+non-easy things (devs are lazy). Easy-kinda-simple vs non-easy-kinda-simple-but-long-term-gains? No contest in my opinion.
I think Nix is a beautiful idea but it's an uphill battle.
- stevebmark 5y agoI agree, there’s a reason no one uses Nix. It has terrible DX
- rch 5y agoQuite a few people use Nix.
- kortex 5y agoWell "no one" is a bit absolute. But colloquially, I know what you mean. Relative to Docker, it's way less popular. But it has 5.2k stars on https://github.com/NixOS/nix https://github.com/NixOS/nix . But yeah. The DX "needs work". which is a nice way of saying, I find it downright painful to use.
- jessaustin 5y agoDoes it seem weird to anyone that Nix insists on installing its "/nix" directory on the root directory rather than somewhere sensible like "/usr" or even "/usr/local" ?