9 ms·

Show HN: Garnix, fast and easy CI for Nix

120 points by jkarni 4y ago

Hello HN! For the past few months, I've been building a Nix-specific CI service, and quite a few people have been productively using it, so I thought I'd Show HN it. You might be wondering why build a Nix-specific CI. It turns out its quite hard to get a really good CI setup for Nix without spending a lot of time or money on it (or both), and even then solutions don't tend to be optimal. Garnix, on the other hand, handles everything, and simply. Just create an account, install the GitHub app on the repositories you want, and you're good to go! Each package gets its own GitHub check, and separate log output, which makes it really easy to figure out what went wrong (you can see an example here: https://garnix.io/build/X9knYZOB https://garnix.io/build/X9knYZOB). Builds are very fast compared to e.g Github Actions. The build artifacts are made available in a Nix cache so you never have to rebuild locally. And there are builders for x86-64 Linux as well as M1 Macs and aarch64 Linux. Try it out: https://garnix.io https://garnix.io. It's free, though if you like it, consider donating! (Note that it only works with flakes.) Cheers, Julian

nkmnz 4y ago
love the name
- blumomo 4y ago
  „gar nix“ is German slang for „nothing“ / „absolutely nothing“.
  - jason-phillips 4y ago
    As an Ami who grew up in West Germany, das ist die erste Sache dass ich habe auch gesehen/that's the first thing I saw too. Also, "gar nichts". But we would say gar nix for short.
    - thrdbndndn 4y ago
      What does Ami mean in this context? (I know Amis people [1], but don't think it would be relevant here). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amis_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amis_people
      - slater 4y ago
        "Ami" is German short form for "American"
        b-zee 4y ago
        According to the Wiktionary linked: > (informal, mildly derogatory) Yank, Yankee, American (native or inhabitant of the USA)
      - kiesewetter 4y ago
        German slang for "US citizens", shortend from "Amerikaner". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ami https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ami
        weinzierl 4y ago
        Be careful, it is derogatory.
        slater 4y ago
        What? No it isn't.
        weinzierl 4y ago
        If you are not offended by it, good for you. If I was American I'd definitely be, and that is judged as a German who knows how that word is used here. "Ami – go home!" is a popular enough slogan that it has it's own Wikipedia entry[1], unsurprisingly only in German and French. [1] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ami_–_go_home https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ami_–_go_home! EDIT: For some reason the link doesn't work on HN. Either copy and paste "https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ami_–_go_home https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ami_–_go_home!" or use https://bit.ly/3CZXNxh https://bit.ly/3CZXNxh
        School-Cotton 4y ago
        Some people seem to think all slang terms for cultural groups are automatically derogatory. A sizable proportion of people from the US get offended that people from Latin America call them “gringos” too (which is ridiculous IMO).
  - masklinn 4y ago
    Interestingly, I assumed it was just a reference to author Garth Nix.
    - jkarni 4y ago
      I hadn't heard of Garth Nix! It was in fact from the German. I like the suggestion that the CI should feel like "nothing at all" (rather than the painful slow trial-and-error process of setting up most CIs, which makes you very much aware of them). I also happen to live very near where Marlene Dietrich lived, who has a famous song in which "und sonst gar nichts/nix" is the refrain ("and nothing else") [0]. When garnix becomes a noun of its own, as here, it reads instead as "and otherwise, garnix", which I find mildly funny. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahyLLX0tmD8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahyLLX0tmD8
simjue 4y ago
> It's free But is it open-source? I can't find the code.
- jkarni 4y ago
  It isn't open-source yet (and might never be). But it also might, as I said in a sibling comment, I've been thinking about a license that would require only running it (and derived software) on green energy; that way, if competition were to arise, cheaper/dirtier energy wouldn't be what we would be competing on. But figuring out whether that's plausible, and what the consequences of the decision would be, is hard. (In general the idea of a license that's viral like GPL, but oriented towards green and renewable energy, seems like an interesting thought to me.)
  - HL33tibCe7 4y ago
    So essentially no then
    - ktm5j 4y ago
      Decidedly no.. just like they said very clearly.
  - simjue 4y ago
    I see. Interesting idea with the green energy. But basically a non-opensource CI would be very difficult to justify due to the vendor lock-in. Yet I'm using github-workflows out of convenience...
    - maccard 4y ago
      I've never worked anywhere that used a FOSS solution for CI. We currently use buildkite, my last two jobs used TeamCity and another job used Electric Commander (!). We don't care about vendor lock in, we can rewrite the build scripts. We care about support.
    - jkarni 4y ago
yewenjie 4y ago
I have been using it for past four months and have been generally happy with it. Any clue about when you're thinking of either open-sourcing it or launching paid plans?
- jkarni 4y ago
  Glad you're liking it! I've been working on simplified hosting for nixosConfigurations; likely I'll launch paid plans along with that, since otherwise costs will be too high for me to shoulder, and anyhow free hosting leads to abuse or the moral hazard of accidentally using too many resources. I still have some hope for a donation-based system for individuals, and paid plans for companies, though. I do think about open-sourcing it as well. I've been thinking about a license that would require only running it (and derived software) on green energy; that way, if competition were to arise, cheaper/dirtier energy wouldn't be what we would be competing on. But figuring out whether that's plausible, and what the consequences of the decision would be, is hard!
  - mikedelago 4y ago
    I can't say I like that idea for licensing the source code only to use in systems that run off of clean energy. It's great in practice, and I would love for all electricity use to be non-renewable, but it's saying that many people in many countries are not allowed to use the software due to something entirely out of their control.
    - jkarni 4y ago
      I think you're absolutely right that there are nuances such as what you described. More: I imagine there are very few offices/homes that run completely on clean energy - in the most naive formulation of the license, no one could test the software locally! Likely first you'd need some progressive system (e.g.: no less than 80% now, no less than 100% by 2030). But I disagree with you on that people in many countries would not be allowed to use the software - you would still be able to use the service (i.e., visit garnix.io, have it build things), or even host it yourself in a different country. Yes, countries with more green energy (rather than exclusively cheap energy) would benefit. But the countries with high green/renewable energy aren't even primarily rich ones [0], so I don't feel too bad about that. Note that this argument only applies to services such as garnix, where you can still use the service (so it would be a bad license for, for example, a text editor). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable...
mplanchard 4y ago
Looks pretty nice! Any plans or thoughts around supporting GitLab?
- jkarni 4y ago
  Thoughts yes, concrete timelines no. But you can follow the issue [0] to get notifications once it happens. [0] https://github.com/garnix-io/issues/issues/21 https://github.com/garnix-io/issues/issues/21
forgotpwd16 4y ago
>To top it all up, we run on 100% renewable energy. How is that? You run the entire infrastructure on solar panels or something?
- jkarni 4y ago
  We exclusively use Hetzner (Finland and Germany) for the servers, and they use hydropower and wind (see https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/ https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/). I've been wanting to write a blog post about what this means and how much it matters in practice, but there's a lot of research to do still. If someone here works in the area, please get in touch!
  - mrcjkb 4y ago
    I wouldn't really see using hydro power in Europe as being "green". Yes, it's renewable, but the installation capacities are pretty much exhausted, and have been before there was any significant share of renewables. So by cutting a deal with a hydro power supplier, you're only displacing another consumer who will possibly start using coal, and not doing anything to support the growth of renewable energies. Smells a bit like greenwashing to me...
  - samdcbu 4y ago
    Wow, I didn't realize there were currently any hosting providers who had managed to find 24/7 carbon-free electricity (CFE). Hydro seems like the only option right now for data centers because we don't have energy storage on the scale needed to run a data center 24/7 using only wind and solar. Nuclear may also be an option in the future if small modular reactors get on a learning curve that reduces their price/kWh to be more competitive. I always forget about nuclear as a CFE energy source even though it's like 50% of the US's carbon free energy. David Roberts, a very wonky and wonderful climate journalist, had Google's director of energy on his podcast to talk about Google's goal of having all their data centers operate on 24/7 CFE. This podcast is why I'm surprised any hosting provider has managed to do achieve 24/7 CFE because its an order or magnitude more difficult than achieving "100% CFE". Here is the link to that episode: https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-michael-terrell-on#details https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-michael-terrell-on#det... If you're interested in this enough to choose your hosting provider based off their energy mix I think you'd really enjoy his substack and podcast. For other comment readers if you the difference between 100% CFE and 24/7 isn't clear, Google's blog post announcing their goal of 24/7 CFE explains the difference between the two and why 24/7 CFE is waaaay more difficult and currently only something a company with Google's resources could do.
solatic 4y ago
So, you're trying to build a more integrated service than Hercules (https://hercules-ci.com/ https://hercules-ci.com/)? How would you compare it?
- jkarni 4y ago
  The main difference is that you don't have to host anything. For most people, setting up servers (likely for multiple architectures) is time consuming, expensive, and wasteful (since your server is sitting idle while you/your team sleep). There are of course situations in which you'd prefer that, though!
- toastal 4y ago
  When the floodgates open to GitLab and more, it'll be a great option for folks.
return_to_monke 4y ago
Why would you recommend using this over for example GitHub Actions (also free) with a workflow that installs nix and then builds the flake?
- jkarni 4y ago
  You need to get caching right if the builds aren't going to take forever, which is a bit of work, especially since smart GC is hard, and it can be slow (the nix store gets big very quickly!). Then you also would ideally provide that cache (as a nix store cache) for yourself and others, so you don't have to rebuild it. But GH Actions doesn't do that, so you need to find a way on your own, or pay for a service like Cachix. Pushing the nix cache can be quite slow. Then the logs are formatted in a very nix-unaware way, which makes it hard to find what you want. And Github doesn't yet even have M1 Mac VMs, so you would get to test/cache that. (I think it's also not possible to do other architectures, like aarch64.) Also, for whatever reason (in addition to the specific ones above), GitHub action runners are just slow... In short: garnix is faster, has more features, and is easier to set up.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  Why would you recommend nix/flakes over Docker?
  - jkarni 4y ago
    There are lots of advantages and disadvantages to both, and use cases where one or the other shines. A proper response would probably be a blog post in length, but in brief, I find that Nix really makes everything explicit. You can see the source code and it reflects everything that went into a build; you can also control every bit of it. It is, however, consequently generally more verbose, and also requires a bit more learning. Nix also tends to compose much more cleanly than docker. Maybe an analogy: nix is a package-lock.json. Docker is a package.json (with no version bounds) and a node_modules directory. You can just copy that node_modules directory around so everyone has the same setup, but it's much harder to introspect than a lock file, and the way you go about updating it is deleting the folder and rebuilding everything - no fine-grained control over one specific dependency.
blakesmith 4y ago
This looks really cool, and showcases how simple CI can be if every git repository exposes a nix flake. Congrats on shipping!
stuzenz 4y ago
Hi Julian, I just had a play with Garnix - and have to say I am impressed. Nicely executed. Nice to see nix and flakes hitting hackernews through projects/services like this.
- jkarni 4y ago
  Thank you!

120 points by jkarni 4y ago

nkmnz 4y ago

love the name

blumomo 4y ago
„gar nix“ is German slang for „nothing“ / „absolutely nothing“.
- jason-phillips 4y ago
  As an Ami who grew up in West Germany, das ist die erste Sache dass ich habe auch gesehen/that's the first thing I saw too. Also, "gar nichts". But we would say gar nix for short.
  - thrdbndndn 4y ago
    What does Ami mean in this context? (I know Amis people [1], but don't think it would be relevant here). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amis_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amis_people
    - slater 4y ago
      "Ami" is German short form for "American"
      - b-zee 4y ago
        According to the Wiktionary linked: > (informal, mildly derogatory) Yank, Yankee, American (native or inhabitant of the USA)
    - kiesewetter 4y ago
      German slang for "US citizens", shortend from "Amerikaner". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ami https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ami
      - weinzierl 4y ago
        Be careful, it is derogatory.
        slater 4y ago
        What? No it isn't.
        weinzierl 4y ago
        If you are not offended by it, good for you. If I was American I'd definitely be, and that is judged as a German who knows how that word is used here. "Ami – go home!" is a popular enough slogan that it has it's own Wikipedia entry[1], unsurprisingly only in German and French. [1] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ami_–_go_home https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ami_–_go_home! EDIT: For some reason the link doesn't work on HN. Either copy and paste "https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ami_–_go_home https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ami_–_go_home!" or use https://bit.ly/3CZXNxh https://bit.ly/3CZXNxh
        School-Cotton 4y ago
        Some people seem to think all slang terms for cultural groups are automatically derogatory. A sizable proportion of people from the US get offended that people from Latin America call them “gringos” too (which is ridiculous IMO).
- masklinn 4y ago
  Interestingly, I assumed it was just a reference to author Garth Nix.
  - jkarni 4y ago
    I hadn't heard of Garth Nix! It was in fact from the German. I like the suggestion that the CI should feel like "nothing at all" (rather than the painful slow trial-and-error process of setting up most CIs, which makes you very much aware of them). I also happen to live very near where Marlene Dietrich lived, who has a famous song in which "und sonst gar nichts/nix" is the refrain ("and nothing else") [0]. When garnix becomes a noun of its own, as here, it reads instead as "and otherwise, garnix", which I find mildly funny. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahyLLX0tmD8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahyLLX0tmD8

simjue 4y ago

> It's free But is it open-source? I can't find the code.

jkarni 4y ago
It isn't open-source yet (and might never be). But it also might, as I said in a sibling comment, I've been thinking about a license that would require only running it (and derived software) on green energy; that way, if competition were to arise, cheaper/dirtier energy wouldn't be what we would be competing on. But figuring out whether that's plausible, and what the consequences of the decision would be, is hard. (In general the idea of a license that's viral like GPL, but oriented towards green and renewable energy, seems like an interesting thought to me.)
- HL33tibCe7 4y ago
  So essentially no then
  - ktm5j 4y ago
    Decidedly no.. just like they said very clearly.
- simjue 4y ago
  I see. Interesting idea with the green energy. But basically a non-opensource CI would be very difficult to justify due to the vendor lock-in. Yet I'm using github-workflows out of convenience...
  - maccard 4y ago
    I've never worked anywhere that used a FOSS solution for CI. We currently use buildkite, my last two jobs used TeamCity and another job used Electric Commander (!). We don't care about vendor lock in, we can rewrite the build scripts. We care about support.
  - jkarni 4y ago

yewenjie 4y ago

I have been using it for past four months and have been generally happy with it. Any clue about when you're thinking of either open-sourcing it or launching paid plans?

jkarni 4y ago
Glad you're liking it! I've been working on simplified hosting for nixosConfigurations; likely I'll launch paid plans along with that, since otherwise costs will be too high for me to shoulder, and anyhow free hosting leads to abuse or the moral hazard of accidentally using too many resources. I still have some hope for a donation-based system for individuals, and paid plans for companies, though. I do think about open-sourcing it as well. I've been thinking about a license that would require only running it (and derived software) on green energy; that way, if competition were to arise, cheaper/dirtier energy wouldn't be what we would be competing on. But figuring out whether that's plausible, and what the consequences of the decision would be, is hard!
- mikedelago 4y ago
  I can't say I like that idea for licensing the source code only to use in systems that run off of clean energy. It's great in practice, and I would love for all electricity use to be non-renewable, but it's saying that many people in many countries are not allowed to use the software due to something entirely out of their control.
  - jkarni 4y ago
    I think you're absolutely right that there are nuances such as what you described. More: I imagine there are very few offices/homes that run completely on clean energy - in the most naive formulation of the license, no one could test the software locally! Likely first you'd need some progressive system (e.g.: no less than 80% now, no less than 100% by 2030). But I disagree with you on that people in many countries would not be allowed to use the software - you would still be able to use the service (i.e., visit garnix.io, have it build things), or even host it yourself in a different country. Yes, countries with more green energy (rather than exclusively cheap energy) would benefit. But the countries with high green/renewable energy aren't even primarily rich ones [0], so I don't feel too bad about that. Note that this argument only applies to services such as garnix, where you can still use the service (so it would be a bad license for, for example, a text editor). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable_electricity_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable...

mplanchard 4y ago

Looks pretty nice! Any plans or thoughts around supporting GitLab?

jkarni 4y ago
Thoughts yes, concrete timelines no. But you can follow the issue [0] to get notifications once it happens. [0] https://github.com/garnix-io/issues/issues/21 https://github.com/garnix-io/issues/issues/21

forgotpwd16 4y ago

>To top it all up, we run on 100% renewable energy. How is that? You run the entire infrastructure on solar panels or something?

jkarni 4y ago
We exclusively use Hetzner (Finland and Germany) for the servers, and they use hydropower and wind (see https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/ https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/umweltschutz/). I've been wanting to write a blog post about what this means and how much it matters in practice, but there's a lot of research to do still. If someone here works in the area, please get in touch!
- mrcjkb 4y ago
  I wouldn't really see using hydro power in Europe as being "green". Yes, it's renewable, but the installation capacities are pretty much exhausted, and have been before there was any significant share of renewables. So by cutting a deal with a hydro power supplier, you're only displacing another consumer who will possibly start using coal, and not doing anything to support the growth of renewable energies. Smells a bit like greenwashing to me...
- samdcbu 4y ago
  Wow, I didn't realize there were currently any hosting providers who had managed to find 24/7 carbon-free electricity (CFE). Hydro seems like the only option right now for data centers because we don't have energy storage on the scale needed to run a data center 24/7 using only wind and solar. Nuclear may also be an option in the future if small modular reactors get on a learning curve that reduces their price/kWh to be more competitive. I always forget about nuclear as a CFE energy source even though it's like 50% of the US's carbon free energy. David Roberts, a very wonky and wonderful climate journalist, had Google's director of energy on his podcast to talk about Google's goal of having all their data centers operate on 24/7 CFE. This podcast is why I'm surprised any hosting provider has managed to do achieve 24/7 CFE because its an order or magnitude more difficult than achieving "100% CFE". Here is the link to that episode: https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-michael-terrell-on#details https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-michael-terrell-on#det... If you're interested in this enough to choose your hosting provider based off their energy mix I think you'd really enjoy his substack and podcast. For other comment readers if you the difference between 100% CFE and 24/7 isn't clear, Google's blog post announcing their goal of 24/7 CFE explains the difference between the two and why 24/7 CFE is waaaay more difficult and currently only something a company with Google's resources could do.

solatic 4y ago

So, you're trying to build a more integrated service than Hercules (https://hercules-ci.com/ https://hercules-ci.com/)? How would you compare it?

jkarni 4y ago
The main difference is that you don't have to host anything. For most people, setting up servers (likely for multiple architectures) is time consuming, expensive, and wasteful (since your server is sitting idle while you/your team sleep). There are of course situations in which you'd prefer that, though!
toastal 4y ago
When the floodgates open to GitLab and more, it'll be a great option for folks.

return_to_monke 4y ago

Why would you recommend using this over for example GitHub Actions (also free) with a workflow that installs nix and then builds the flake?

jkarni 4y ago
You need to get caching right if the builds aren't going to take forever, which is a bit of work, especially since smart GC is hard, and it can be slow (the nix store gets big very quickly!). Then you also would ideally provide that cache (as a nix store cache) for yourself and others, so you don't have to rebuild it. But GH Actions doesn't do that, so you need to find a way on your own, or pay for a service like Cachix. Pushing the nix cache can be quite slow. Then the logs are formatted in a very nix-unaware way, which makes it hard to find what you want. And Github doesn't yet even have M1 Mac VMs, so you would get to test/cache that. (I think it's also not possible to do other architectures, like aarch64.) Also, for whatever reason (in addition to the specific ones above), GitHub action runners are just slow... In short: garnix is faster, has more features, and is easier to set up.
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
Why would you recommend nix/flakes over Docker?
- jkarni 4y ago
  There are lots of advantages and disadvantages to both, and use cases where one or the other shines. A proper response would probably be a blog post in length, but in brief, I find that Nix really makes everything explicit. You can see the source code and it reflects everything that went into a build; you can also control every bit of it. It is, however, consequently generally more verbose, and also requires a bit more learning. Nix also tends to compose much more cleanly than docker. Maybe an analogy: nix is a package-lock.json. Docker is a package.json (with no version bounds) and a node_modules directory. You can just copy that node_modules directory around so everyone has the same setup, but it's much harder to introspect than a lock file, and the way you go about updating it is deleting the folder and rebuilding everything - no fine-grained control over one specific dependency.

blakesmith 4y ago

This looks really cool, and showcases how simple CI can be if every git repository exposes a nix flake. Congrats on shipping!

stuzenz 4y ago

Hi Julian, I just had a play with Garnix - and have to say I am impressed. Nicely executed. Nice to see nix and flakes hitting hackernews through projects/services like this.

jkarni 4y ago
Thank you!