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I am fully on board with having reproducible declarative setups, line Nix or Guix offer. I want to note though, that the versions and original code may be the s

I am fully on board with having reproducible declarative setups, line Nix or Guix offer. I want to note though, that the versions and original code may be the same, but it can still happen that something behaves differently on another OS. The code of some version of a package can intentionally do things differently on another OS. So you are not 100% safe from MacOS disturbing things. I wish though, that at my job people were as far as using Nix oder Guix though. Still a long way off of that. Wish people would explore more on and off the job, to realize the potential.

nextos 2y ago
Sure, but if you run the same Nix flake on two macOS machines with the same architecture, it will have the same behavior. Most of package managers don't offer that guarantee. Only Guix has a similar level of assurance? Nix openly recognizes outputs are different per platform, x86_64-linux is different from aarch64-darwin. Impossible not to, as ultimately architectures may behave differently.
mplanchard 2y ago
What we did at our job was I set up a nix config for myself, because I wanted it. When new people onboarded, they had two options: install this list of software or install nix and it’ll all get installed automatically. Enough people chose to use the nix config over time that it became the de facto standard.
- hamandcheese 2y ago
  I like this strategy. Nix can be tricky to explain, so sometimes showing is much easier than telling.
hamandcheese 2y ago
Although Nix seems to be becoming more mainstream, I still have yet to encounter a (forgive me for lack of a better word) normie that uses it. I feel somewhat blessed that I get to work on tools at a company that can support a dedicated tools team. We are free to use the best tool for the job without needing to worry about popularity contests, and nix has truly been a game changer for us.
- nextos 2y ago
  I think it is already seeing some adoption at normal & boring companies, which is a sign of maturity. Frankly, the biggest problem is that it needs some better docs, i.e. some serious corporate funding to get them written.

nextos 2y ago

Sure, but if you run the same Nix flake on two macOS machines with the same architecture, it will have the same behavior. Most of package managers don't offer that guarantee. Only Guix has a similar level of assurance? Nix openly recognizes outputs are different per platform, x86_64-linux is different from aarch64-darwin. Impossible not to, as ultimately architectures may behave differently.

mplanchard 2y ago

What we did at our job was I set up a nix config for myself, because I wanted it. When new people onboarded, they had two options: install this list of software or install nix and it’ll all get installed automatically. Enough people chose to use the nix config over time that it became the de facto standard.

hamandcheese 2y ago
I like this strategy. Nix can be tricky to explain, so sometimes showing is much easier than telling.

hamandcheese 2y ago

Although Nix seems to be becoming more mainstream, I still have yet to encounter a (forgive me for lack of a better word) normie that uses it. I feel somewhat blessed that I get to work on tools at a company that can support a dedicated tools team. We are free to use the best tool for the job without needing to worry about popularity contests, and nix has truly been a game changer for us.

nextos 2y ago
I think it is already seeing some adoption at normal & boring companies, which is a sign of maturity. Frankly, the biggest problem is that it needs some better docs, i.e. some serious corporate funding to get them written.