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My very personal main pain point is documentation: Nix/NixOS do have some, but mostly or too little or deprecated. Where is a proper Flake documentation? Where

by kkfx 4y ago

My very personal main pain point is documentation: Nix/NixOS do have some, but mostly or too little or deprecated. Where is a proper Flake documentation? Where is a proper $newNixFeatureInVogueNow? The second pain point is: Nix might sound nice to read and write as a language for Haskellers, but most people actually aren't haskellers... The third is essentially the fists, more specified: target. If the target is desktop, or server, or HPC, or development docs should be shaped per target. Actually NixOS is designed mostly with dev desktops and infra target, but docs are not even for new devs, more something added aside just because it's part of the duty provide them in some form...

viraptor 4y ago
> Where is a proper Flake documentation? That one actually exists in the right place. (Assuming you meant the flake file) https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/new-cli/nix3-flake.html https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/new-cli/nix3...
- kkfx 4y ago
  Let's say a new user start using NixOS: where he/she find a good starting point to quickly deploy hes/shes first flake-based NixOS test desktop? Than the user want a bit more, let's say "hey, since it's damn easy let's build a custom ISO with my testing desktop config for replication. Sure some blog posts do exists, but from official docs? A third point "oh, nice, now I have a reasonably good NixOS config, a way to deploy it from a custom ISO on a local machine. What about a LAN-wide deploy?" (here is the delirium, and ok, not only for NixOS but for most OS out there, NixOS in particular have stared NixOps, but now seems a bit abandoned, Disnix is not really documented and so on). That's why my third point is separated from the first: what's the target? The above example is what I see as a classic GNU/Linux nerdy/a bit navigated user path to NixOS for a personal usage as a desktop and for a home-lab-alike infra. For such target there is no good docs at all. For some niche, like HPC for Guix, again there is nothing "targeted". Similarly for all NixOS use cases I can imaging. That's why I conclude that docs was produced as a separate stuff "we need to have, not nice to made, not really useful" instead of the base to create newcomers paths to NixOS and also drive future design decisions because writing targeted docs in natural language is the best way to spot very high level logical design issues very hard to get up front discussing between devs and quickly produced code.
YoshiRulz 4y ago
Counter-anecdata: I took to Nix very easily, including its more Functional aspects, despite my little prior experience with FP and 0 experience with Haskell specifically.

by kkfx 4y ago

viraptor 4y ago

> Where is a proper Flake documentation? That one actually exists in the right place. (Assuming you meant the flake file) https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/new-cli/nix3-flake.html https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/new-cli/nix3...

kkfx 4y ago
Let's say a new user start using NixOS: where he/she find a good starting point to quickly deploy hes/shes first flake-based NixOS test desktop? Than the user want a bit more, let's say "hey, since it's damn easy let's build a custom ISO with my testing desktop config for replication. Sure some blog posts do exists, but from official docs? A third point "oh, nice, now I have a reasonably good NixOS config, a way to deploy it from a custom ISO on a local machine. What about a LAN-wide deploy?" (here is the delirium, and ok, not only for NixOS but for most OS out there, NixOS in particular have stared NixOps, but now seems a bit abandoned, Disnix is not really documented and so on). That's why my third point is separated from the first: what's the target? The above example is what I see as a classic GNU/Linux nerdy/a bit navigated user path to NixOS for a personal usage as a desktop and for a home-lab-alike infra. For such target there is no good docs at all. For some niche, like HPC for Guix, again there is nothing "targeted". Similarly for all NixOS use cases I can imaging. That's why I conclude that docs was produced as a separate stuff "we need to have, not nice to made, not really useful" instead of the base to create newcomers paths to NixOS and also drive future design decisions because writing targeted docs in natural language is the best way to spot very high level logical design issues very hard to get up front discussing between devs and quickly produced code.

YoshiRulz 4y ago

Counter-anecdata: I took to Nix very easily, including its more Functional aspects, despite my little prior experience with FP and 0 experience with Haskell specifically.