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I keep reading, this, and keeping being told this. Yet I switched every system over to nix and have found no thing but the best examples documentation and help

I keep reading, this, and keeping being told this. Yet I switched every system over to nix and have found no thing but the best examples documentation and help from nix to do so. Within the span of a afternoon and a bit a reading I went from zero, to a script that lets me setup an entire dev systems with just a few commands in a vm, and or even on hardware. If anything the Nix documentation is just as good as every other thing out there. What is different is there are more than one way to do many things in Nix. This to me I think is the core of complaints. Its a language, and thus the language has may expressions that result in the same outcome. The second bit I think people struggle with is it is functional. If you look at Nix complaints they appear to nearly be identical to that of Haskell.

CapsAdmin 4y ago
I also didn't notice that the documentation was especially bad. I'm thinking maybe it makes more sense for some programmers?
kstenerud 4y ago
Then you are a superhuman. I too went through weeks of pain and suffering to get my nixos hypervisor running, and if I were to lose my script and have to start from scratch again, I'd just install Debian instead. I would never recommend nixos to anyone. The concept is awesome, but the execution is terrible.
- prox 4y ago
  What I often find is this “ought to know” treshold. Parent comment user is probably familiar with lingo you are not. Documentation often assumes a certain level and a writer does not imagine a less capable user.
  - pxc 4y ago
    Yes, the Nix community has great reference docs for people who already know how things work, for most things imo. At the same time, it isn't always obvious enough where to find a good introduction to terms and concepts used. But materials of that kind are increasingly available and general gaps are being filled with a lot of focus lately.
laserlight 4y ago
By documentation, I believe people mean tutorials. At least, lack of tutorials is my complaint. I've read all introductory material. I want to build a customized version of emacs on nix, yet I have no idea how to do it or where to start.
- scoopertrooper 4y ago
  Why use a tutorial when ChatGPT has you covered? > How do I create a nix package that clones eMacs from GitHub and builds it from source? { pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {}, fetchFromGitHub }: let emacsSrc = fetchFromGitHub { owner = "emacs-mirror"; repo = "emacs"; rev = "master"; sha256 = "0xabcd1234"; }; in pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation { name = "emacs"; version = "27.1"; src = emacsSrc; buildInputs = [ pkgs.autoconf pkgs.make ]; configurePhase = '' autoconf ./configure --prefix=$out ''; buildPhase = "make"; installPhase = "make install"; }
  - delroth 4y ago
    As usual for ChatGPT this is full of mistakes and bad code. The buildPhase and installPhase it writes are completely unnecessary and worse than the default, the configurePhase might work in some cases but most likely won't, and it's unnecessary when instead autoreconfHook should be used, stdenv/autoconf should be taken as an argument for the function returning the derivation, autoconf should be a nativeBuildInput, make is already in stdenv, etc.
    - toastal 4y ago
      You're also supposed to call the pre and post hooks for these phases.
    - Rexogamer 4y ago
      More fundamentally, even if the code produced by ChatGPT worked and was high-quality, why should a new user have to rely on a chatbot instead of useful/up-to-date tutorials and guides?
  - 4y ago
masklinn 4y ago
> It's a language, and thus the language has may expressions that result in the same outcome. First it's a distribution and a package manager, and the guidance regarding these is sub-par. Especially with what there is of documentation being split between the old and new UIs, then being told about flakes but that they're experimental so it's not clear whether you should or should not use them. I just went to the nix website, clicked "first steps with nix" and I get https://nixos.org/guides/ad-hoc-developer-environments.html https://nixos.org/guides/ad-hoc-developer-environments.html Is that useful? I'm sure to somebody who already knows what they want out of nix it is, but the first thing I'm told is that shell environments exist and are useful to "use the tool without having to install the software.". Ok, but what if I want to install the software? Then there's listing of what's essentially a magical invocation out of nowhere: $ nix-shell -p 'python38.withPackages (packages: [ packages.django ])' I can understand that (or at least reach what I assume is an understanding), but there's no real explanation to give me knowledge to expand upon, if anything the explanations are worse than useless: > We create an ad hoc environment with $PYTHONPATH set and python available, along with the django package. thank you very much, that confirms I'd about interpreted the line correctly, but you've not told me what `withPackages` is or where `packages.django` comes out of so I'm not really helped. And apparently the next step is "declarative and reproducible developer environments", or possibly "towards reproducibility: pinning Nixpkgs"? Or even better, "To quickly setup a Nix project read through Getting started Nix template", I have no clue what a nix project is or why I'd want one. There's not just a step missing here, there's an entire floor, possibly building. It's like the nix community saw how git is taught and went "we can do worse".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- soraminazuki 4y ago
  > Is that useful? I'm sure to somebody who already knows what they want out of nix it is, but the first thing I'm told is that shell environments exist and are useful to "use the tool without having to install the software.". Ok, but what if I want to install the software? Why would you go to https://nixos.org/learn.html https://nixos.org/learn.html, click on an introductory example titled "Ad-hoc developer environments" and complain that it doesn't explain how to permanently install software? > but there's no real explanation to give me knowledge to expand upon Again, you're pointing to a page containing TLDR examples. That's not the right place for an in-depth explanation. > There's not just a step missing here, there's an entire floor, possibly building. It's like the nix community saw how git is taught and went "we can do worse". No surprise because you missed the entire manual.
soraminazuki 4y ago
Nix actually has far better than average documentation compared to other typical open source projects. I started using Nix years ago on Ubuntu to quickly install a package that wasn't present in Ubuntu's repository. Eventually, I began customizing packages using Nix expressions. Before I knew it, I migrated my existing systems over to NixOS. What I can say is it wasn't at all the uphill struggle that's associated with Nix in online discussions. Even though the documentation isn't perfect and going through active improvements, there's a considerable gap between Nix's reputation regarding documentation and my own actual experience. What surprises me is that people tout RPM/Chef as easier replacements to Nix/NixOS. The assumption about those being "replacements" of each other is questionable because they address different needs. What's even more questionable is the part about RPM or Chef being easy. I have dealt with those two for years as part of my day job, and they're both far from easy. I still have troubles with them to this day. Documentation is far more lacking than Nix, and it's not because things are obvious. If you encounter any trouble, you almost always have to dive into the source code. Navigating the source code of RPM or Chef is a nightmare because the code is scattered across countless different repositories and it's impossible to guess where to look for to begin with. Choice of programming languages doen't help here too. Chef is written in Ruby, which has a tendency of making code ungreppable due to its metaprogramming features. RPM has its own macro syntax which works similar to the C preprocessor. It's very terse and full of gotchas. Navigating around Nix code is much, much easier in comparison. Everything you need is in a single repo, https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs, and written in a JSON-like language. Many people also claim that Nix is hard because it requires a functional programming background. That too doesn't match my experience. Nix expressions are basically JSON with functions. Learning the syntax is a non-issue if you know JSON and some common programming language constructs like conditionals, functions, map, filter and reduce. The only functional programming exposure I had prior to Nix was LISP, in a university classroom. Yet I didn't experience problems learning the syntax. The hard part is learning how to actually utilize the language. The documentation and some grepping around of the Nixpkgs codebase helped a lot with this.
tsuujin 4y ago
My complaint is chiefly about practical implementation. “I want to use nix as a package manager across systems” is far too difficult for a new user. One document tells you to flakes, another tells you that it’s experimental and should be avoided. One document tells you that you should use Darwin modules and home manager, and then completely omits the fact that the linked home manager scripts don’t work with Darwin by design leading to “why the fuck isn’t this file they tell me should be auto generated not being created”. Because the official docs don’t seem to cover real world use cases, you end up relying on a labyrinth of out of date and conflicting user contributed tutorials and it is very frustrating. Once you know what to do nix is simple enough, but learning what to do is outright painful; if you don’t believe me look to the other replies to my comment.

CapsAdmin 4y ago

I also didn't notice that the documentation was especially bad. I'm thinking maybe it makes more sense for some programmers?

kstenerud 4y ago

Then you are a superhuman. I too went through weeks of pain and suffering to get my nixos hypervisor running, and if I were to lose my script and have to start from scratch again, I'd just install Debian instead. I would never recommend nixos to anyone. The concept is awesome, but the execution is terrible.

prox 4y ago
What I often find is this “ought to know” treshold. Parent comment user is probably familiar with lingo you are not. Documentation often assumes a certain level and a writer does not imagine a less capable user.
- pxc 4y ago
  Yes, the Nix community has great reference docs for people who already know how things work, for most things imo. At the same time, it isn't always obvious enough where to find a good introduction to terms and concepts used. But materials of that kind are increasingly available and general gaps are being filled with a lot of focus lately.

laserlight 4y ago

By documentation, I believe people mean tutorials. At least, lack of tutorials is my complaint. I've read all introductory material. I want to build a customized version of emacs on nix, yet I have no idea how to do it or where to start.

scoopertrooper 4y ago
Why use a tutorial when ChatGPT has you covered? > How do I create a nix package that clones eMacs from GitHub and builds it from source? { pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {}, fetchFromGitHub }: let emacsSrc = fetchFromGitHub { owner = "emacs-mirror"; repo = "emacs"; rev = "master"; sha256 = "0xabcd1234"; }; in pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation { name = "emacs"; version = "27.1"; src = emacsSrc; buildInputs = [ pkgs.autoconf pkgs.make ]; configurePhase = '' autoconf ./configure --prefix=$out ''; buildPhase = "make"; installPhase = "make install"; }
- delroth 4y ago
  As usual for ChatGPT this is full of mistakes and bad code. The buildPhase and installPhase it writes are completely unnecessary and worse than the default, the configurePhase might work in some cases but most likely won't, and it's unnecessary when instead autoreconfHook should be used, stdenv/autoconf should be taken as an argument for the function returning the derivation, autoconf should be a nativeBuildInput, make is already in stdenv, etc.
  - toastal 4y ago
    You're also supposed to call the pre and post hooks for these phases.
  - Rexogamer 4y ago
    More fundamentally, even if the code produced by ChatGPT worked and was high-quality, why should a new user have to rely on a chatbot instead of useful/up-to-date tutorials and guides?
- 4y ago

masklinn 4y ago

> It's a language, and thus the language has may expressions that result in the same outcome. First it's a distribution and a package manager, and the guidance regarding these is sub-par. Especially with what there is of documentation being split between the old and new UIs, then being told about flakes but that they're experimental so it's not clear whether you should or should not use them. I just went to the nix website, clicked "first steps with nix" and I get https://nixos.org/guides/ad-hoc-developer-environments.html https://nixos.org/guides/ad-hoc-developer-environments.html Is that useful? I'm sure to somebody who already knows what they want out of nix it is, but the first thing I'm told is that shell environments exist and are useful to "use the tool without having to install the software.". Ok, but what if I want to install the software? Then there's listing of what's essentially a magical invocation out of nowhere: $ nix-shell -p 'python38.withPackages (packages: [ packages.django ])' I can understand that (or at least reach what I assume is an understanding), but there's no real explanation to give me knowledge to expand upon, if anything the explanations are worse than useless: > We create an ad hoc environment with $PYTHONPATH set and python available, along with the django package. thank you very much, that confirms I'd about interpreted the line correctly, but you've not told me what `withPackages` is or where `packages.django` comes out of so I'm not really helped. And apparently the next step is "declarative and reproducible developer environments", or possibly "towards reproducibility: pinning Nixpkgs"? Or even better, "To quickly setup a Nix project read through Getting started Nix template", I have no clue what a nix project is or why I'd want one. There's not just a step missing here, there's an entire floor, possibly building. It's like the nix community saw how git is taught and went "we can do worse".

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
soraminazuki 4y ago
> Is that useful? I'm sure to somebody who already knows what they want out of nix it is, but the first thing I'm told is that shell environments exist and are useful to "use the tool without having to install the software.". Ok, but what if I want to install the software? Why would you go to https://nixos.org/learn.html https://nixos.org/learn.html, click on an introductory example titled "Ad-hoc developer environments" and complain that it doesn't explain how to permanently install software? > but there's no real explanation to give me knowledge to expand upon Again, you're pointing to a page containing TLDR examples. That's not the right place for an in-depth explanation. > There's not just a step missing here, there's an entire floor, possibly building. It's like the nix community saw how git is taught and went "we can do worse". No surprise because you missed the entire manual.

soraminazuki 4y ago

Nix actually has far better than average documentation compared to other typical open source projects. I started using Nix years ago on Ubuntu to quickly install a package that wasn't present in Ubuntu's repository. Eventually, I began customizing packages using Nix expressions. Before I knew it, I migrated my existing systems over to NixOS. What I can say is it wasn't at all the uphill struggle that's associated with Nix in online discussions. Even though the documentation isn't perfect and going through active improvements, there's a considerable gap between Nix's reputation regarding documentation and my own actual experience. What surprises me is that people tout RPM/Chef as easier replacements to Nix/NixOS. The assumption about those being "replacements" of each other is questionable because they address different needs. What's even more questionable is the part about RPM or Chef being easy. I have dealt with those two for years as part of my day job, and they're both far from easy. I still have troubles with them to this day. Documentation is far more lacking than Nix, and it's not because things are obvious. If you encounter any trouble, you almost always have to dive into the source code. Navigating the source code of RPM or Chef is a nightmare because the code is scattered across countless different repositories and it's impossible to guess where to look for to begin with. Choice of programming languages doen't help here too. Chef is written in Ruby, which has a tendency of making code ungreppable due to its metaprogramming features. RPM has its own macro syntax which works similar to the C preprocessor. It's very terse and full of gotchas. Navigating around Nix code is much, much easier in comparison. Everything you need is in a single repo, https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs, and written in a JSON-like language. Many people also claim that Nix is hard because it requires a functional programming background. That too doesn't match my experience. Nix expressions are basically JSON with functions. Learning the syntax is a non-issue if you know JSON and some common programming language constructs like conditionals, functions, map, filter and reduce. The only functional programming exposure I had prior to Nix was LISP, in a university classroom. Yet I didn't experience problems learning the syntax. The hard part is learning how to actually utilize the language. The documentation and some grepping around of the Nixpkgs codebase helped a lot with this.

tsuujin 4y ago

My complaint is chiefly about practical implementation. “I want to use nix as a package manager across systems” is far too difficult for a new user. One document tells you to flakes, another tells you that it’s experimental and should be avoided. One document tells you that you should use Darwin modules and home manager, and then completely omits the fact that the linked home manager scripts don’t work with Darwin by design leading to “why the fuck isn’t this file they tell me should be auto generated not being created”. Because the official docs don’t seem to cover real world use cases, you end up relying on a labyrinth of out of date and conflicting user contributed tutorials and it is very frustrating. Once you know what to do nix is simple enough, but learning what to do is outright painful; if you don’t believe me look to the other replies to my comment.