3 ms·

To be fair, you'll run into issues with Docker Desktop too though. I've found Rancher Desktop to be as reliable or better than Docker for my needs.

fncivivue7 4y ago
nextos 4y ago
Why not using Nix? No container needed, so it's much simpler, and the software selection for aarch64 (i.e. M1) is enormous.
- behnamoh 4y ago
  Doesn't NixOS require reboot after each software install? I don't remember the last time I restarted my Mac or even PC.
  - e44858 4y ago
    No
  - geofft 4y ago
    I believe NixOS does not (there's a "nixos-rebuild switch" command that sounds vaguely like it requires a reboot, and NixOS does aim for declarative confgs, but it knows how to restart services etc. without rebooting your whole machine - see chapter 3 of the NixOS manual: https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/index.html#sec-changing-config https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/index.html#sec-changin...) But the proposal here isn't about running NixOS as your OS, since we're talking about macOS. It's about using Nix as an additional package/environment manager on top of another OS/kernel, in this case macOS, though of course Linux is well-supported too. Each file in Nix is stored in a path that's computed based on the hash of the relevant source code, and depends on other files (e.g., libraries) via their hash-based paths, too. So you can straightforwardly have multiple execution environments with their own dependencies that don't interfere. It's an alternative solution to the dependency problem: containers leave paths alone, but create a new root filesystem for each container. Nix programs all share one root filesystem, but modify the paths so nothing uses e.g. /usr/bin or /usr/lib. Precisely because Nix binaries isolate themselves from /usr and carry their own dependencies, the Nix packaging repo "nixpkgs" can be used on any Linux machine, not just NixOS ones. And the Nix folks also build nixpkgs for macOS, so most software in nixpkgs can be installed on a macOS machine too. This gets you a solution to the dependency problem on macOS itself (because there are no Linux-style containers on macOS). If you want, it also gets you a relatively consistent dev environment for applications that will be eventually deployed on Linux: although the kernel is different and of course the binaries are compiled for different kernels, the entire userspace can be the same on macOS and Linux.
    - nextos 4y ago
      nixos-rebuild switch does not require a reboot. In fact, you'd typically use nixos-rebuild boot if you don't want immediate changes. For very complicated reconfigurations, it might be advisable to reboot if that involves changes to services that are only started during boot time. But that's the case for nearly any OS...
  - nextos 4y ago
    I mean Nix on a Mac, as a package manager, not full NixOS. Linux is still not totally ready on M1 machines. And of course it does not require a reboot.

fncivivue7 4y ago

nextos 4y ago

Why not using Nix? No container needed, so it's much simpler, and the software selection for aarch64 (i.e. M1) is enormous.

behnamoh 4y ago
Doesn't NixOS require reboot after each software install? I don't remember the last time I restarted my Mac or even PC.
- e44858 4y ago
  No
- geofft 4y ago
  I believe NixOS does not (there's a "nixos-rebuild switch" command that sounds vaguely like it requires a reboot, and NixOS does aim for declarative confgs, but it knows how to restart services etc. without rebooting your whole machine - see chapter 3 of the NixOS manual: https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/index.html#sec-changing-config https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/index.html#sec-changin...) But the proposal here isn't about running NixOS as your OS, since we're talking about macOS. It's about using Nix as an additional package/environment manager on top of another OS/kernel, in this case macOS, though of course Linux is well-supported too. Each file in Nix is stored in a path that's computed based on the hash of the relevant source code, and depends on other files (e.g., libraries) via their hash-based paths, too. So you can straightforwardly have multiple execution environments with their own dependencies that don't interfere. It's an alternative solution to the dependency problem: containers leave paths alone, but create a new root filesystem for each container. Nix programs all share one root filesystem, but modify the paths so nothing uses e.g. /usr/bin or /usr/lib. Precisely because Nix binaries isolate themselves from /usr and carry their own dependencies, the Nix packaging repo "nixpkgs" can be used on any Linux machine, not just NixOS ones. And the Nix folks also build nixpkgs for macOS, so most software in nixpkgs can be installed on a macOS machine too. This gets you a solution to the dependency problem on macOS itself (because there are no Linux-style containers on macOS). If you want, it also gets you a relatively consistent dev environment for applications that will be eventually deployed on Linux: although the kernel is different and of course the binaries are compiled for different kernels, the entire userspace can be the same on macOS and Linux.
  - nextos 4y ago
    nixos-rebuild switch does not require a reboot. In fact, you'd typically use nixos-rebuild boot if you don't want immediate changes. For very complicated reconfigurations, it might be advisable to reboot if that involves changes to services that are only started during boot time. But that's the case for nearly any OS...
- nextos 4y ago
  I mean Nix on a Mac, as a package manager, not full NixOS. Linux is still not totally ready on M1 machines. And of course it does not require a reboot.