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I was thinking the other day that the power of things like docker or systemd is in recognizing that there is utility in "spawn something in a hermetic environme

I was thinking the other day that the power of things like docker or systemd is in recognizing that there is utility in "spawn something in a hermetic environment" for different shades of environment, and Nix would absolutely slot in the hierarchy as an environment with specified build configurations... which is something that absolutely should be a killer, widely used tool like, well, docker files are. That it's not indicates that there is a reason why it's not, and I don't think it's because of a lack of demand. Rather, I think there's something about Nix that causes people to bounce off it hard, and if people want Nix to be more widely used, then it absolutely is a problem that aficionados of Nix need to look at and address.

theossuary 3y ago
I agree. Nix is awesome in a way, but it's also a product of it's time (early/mid 2000s). It definitely solved the problem of reproducible build environments, but it didn't solve isolated environments like docker did. It also has an issue where there are soany ways to do things, it's hard to know what the best way is for your situation (especially between flakes and nonflakes). But I'd say the biggest issue with Nix in general is it's lack of discoverability. This is evidenced in the number of third-party tools built around helping figure out what even exists (noogle.dev and search.nixos.org for example). The language is so dynamic, trying to figure out where things are coming from becomes difficult. Simply put, there's too much magic. Nix also has a tendency to drop down into massive bash scripts to actually do stuff. I really like guix as an alternative in theory, but I haven't had much luck using it yet.
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
"Environment with specified build configurations" is a fractal rabbit hole that unpacks into a myriad of recursive problems. There is no turnkey solution for this, but there is a way out and a way to (eventually) tame the complexity.
psanford 3y ago
Yes. I switched from Ubuntu to NixOS ~18 months ago. I am so much happier with NixOS than ubuntu. Its the easiest packaging system I've used where you can easily mix and match stable and unstable packages without worrying about a huge mess of dependencies. I also find myself much more empowered to upgrade packages for security patches myself since I know that I can add an overlay to update the package and everything will just build. And yet... there's so much I just don't understand. Doing simple overlays is relatively easy, but anything of moderate complexity really becomes frustrating. It makes it quite difficult to recommend NixOS when the chasm between being able to use it vs being able to understand it is so wide.

theossuary 3y ago

I agree. Nix is awesome in a way, but it's also a product of it's time (early/mid 2000s). It definitely solved the problem of reproducible build environments, but it didn't solve isolated environments like docker did. It also has an issue where there are soany ways to do things, it's hard to know what the best way is for your situation (especially between flakes and nonflakes). But I'd say the biggest issue with Nix in general is it's lack of discoverability. This is evidenced in the number of third-party tools built around helping figure out what even exists (noogle.dev and search.nixos.org for example). The language is so dynamic, trying to figure out where things are coming from becomes difficult. Simply put, there's too much magic. Nix also has a tendency to drop down into massive bash scripts to actually do stuff. I really like guix as an alternative in theory, but I haven't had much luck using it yet.

otabdeveloper4 3y ago

"Environment with specified build configurations" is a fractal rabbit hole that unpacks into a myriad of recursive problems. There is no turnkey solution for this, but there is a way out and a way to (eventually) tame the complexity.

psanford 3y ago

Yes. I switched from Ubuntu to NixOS ~18 months ago. I am so much happier with NixOS than ubuntu. Its the easiest packaging system I've used where you can easily mix and match stable and unstable packages without worrying about a huge mess of dependencies. I also find myself much more empowered to upgrade packages for security patches myself since I know that I can add an overlay to update the package and everything will just build. And yet... there's so much I just don't understand. Doing simple overlays is relatively easy, but anything of moderate complexity really becomes frustrating. It makes it quite difficult to recommend NixOS when the chasm between being able to use it vs being able to understand it is so wide.