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This is what scares me off from Nix every single time. Even the biggest Nix fans keep saying that the docs are terrible. When I do try Nix people say “oh don’t

This is what scares me off from Nix every single time. Even the biggest Nix fans keep saying that the docs are terrible. When I do try Nix people say “oh don’t do it that way, even though that’s what the docs say, now the way to do it is this new way.” I can never imagine how Nix is going to help me enough to make it worthwhile to endure this hazing.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
It's aggravating and kept me away from it for a while too. Try out small isolated parts of it like nix-shell and the flakes version of it nix develop. You can play with that stuff without having to dive in and commit moving all your existing home and other environments to it. Basically just get a little sandbox going to experiment with until you're more confident in doing more with it (or you might find you don't need it and didn't waste much effort/time).
JamesSwift 4y ago
Its much better than in the past, really in a night-and-day way. At least thats been my experience after bouncing in-and-out over 5-6 years and finally sticking with it about 2 years ago.
rgoulter 4y ago
> When I do try Nix people say “oh don’t do it that way, even though that’s what the docs say, now the way to do it is this new way.” What were you trying to do such that the way the docs said to do it was wrong?
- dizhn 4y ago
  Even simple things like how to install a package.
  - otabdeveloper4 4y ago
    Most people who use Nix don't ever "install packages". It's a very niche and weird thing to want to do, so yes, you won't find good documentation.
    - dizhn 4y ago
      https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/introduction.html https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/introduction.html "package manager" is literally in the first sentence.
      - rgoulter 4y ago
        Right. Installing packages isn't a niche or weird thing in any way. Nix does have equivalents to "apt install <package>", etc... but, it's prone to "I forgot I did that / I didn't know I did that", and problems arising from that. (Other distribution package managers like apt-get or pacman require installing packages as root; but with nix packages should be installed as non-root. And the nix command to update installed packages isn't intuitive). What's typically encouraged is to instead install packages as part of the NixOS configuration, or as part of a home-manager configuration. Or, just using commands like "nix shell nixpkgs#<package>", which just adds the program to the path in the current shell, without installing it. (Which is a neat feature of nix).
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  Arguably anything in the docs that say "Run nix-env ..." is wrong, or at least not the flakes way of doing things. It would be much more clear if the docs just came out and said "nix-env is deprecated, move to flakes, here's where to read the flakes way to do things".

qbasic_forever 4y ago

It's aggravating and kept me away from it for a while too. Try out small isolated parts of it like nix-shell and the flakes version of it nix develop. You can play with that stuff without having to dive in and commit moving all your existing home and other environments to it. Basically just get a little sandbox going to experiment with until you're more confident in doing more with it (or you might find you don't need it and didn't waste much effort/time).

JamesSwift 4y ago

Its much better than in the past, really in a night-and-day way. At least thats been my experience after bouncing in-and-out over 5-6 years and finally sticking with it about 2 years ago.

rgoulter 4y ago

> When I do try Nix people say “oh don’t do it that way, even though that’s what the docs say, now the way to do it is this new way.” What were you trying to do such that the way the docs said to do it was wrong?

dizhn 4y ago
Even simple things like how to install a package.
- otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  Most people who use Nix don't ever "install packages". It's a very niche and weird thing to want to do, so yes, you won't find good documentation.
  - dizhn 4y ago
    https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/introduction.html https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/introduction.html "package manager" is literally in the first sentence.
    - rgoulter 4y ago
      Right. Installing packages isn't a niche or weird thing in any way. Nix does have equivalents to "apt install <package>", etc... but, it's prone to "I forgot I did that / I didn't know I did that", and problems arising from that. (Other distribution package managers like apt-get or pacman require installing packages as root; but with nix packages should be installed as non-root. And the nix command to update installed packages isn't intuitive). What's typically encouraged is to instead install packages as part of the NixOS configuration, or as part of a home-manager configuration. Or, just using commands like "nix shell nixpkgs#<package>", which just adds the program to the path in the current shell, without installing it. (Which is a neat feature of nix).
qbasic_forever 4y ago
Arguably anything in the docs that say "Run nix-env ..." is wrong, or at least not the flakes way of doing things. It would be much more clear if the docs just came out and said "nix-env is deprecated, move to flakes, here's where to read the flakes way to do things".