4 ms·

One Nix flake to rule them all

92 points by ingve 1mo ago

digdugdirk 1mo ago
[flagged]
- sivakon 1mo ago
  > I'm a software engineer, father and wishful amateur surfer. If you've come seeking my political views, you've found the wrong Fareed. this is on their about page
- mcmcmc 1mo ago
  This is not the plagiarist political commentator. From the author’s about page: > I'm a software engineer, father and wishful amateur surfer. If you've come seeking my political views, you've found the wrong Fareed.
- markasoftware 1mo ago
  Please be satire
AyanamiKaine 1mo ago
Wow, it looks really cool! I will definitely try it! If there is one think that breaks me is always chasing that one shared library for example when developing something using SDl3 and its GPU API.
LogTrim 1mo ago
[flagged]
jchw 1mo ago
I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea per se, but hell, what's the point in making everything properly lazy if you couldn't. I mean me personally, I routinely use 20-30 flake inputs for large system configurations and I've never really minded this at all. The only real concern I have is that overriding Nixpkgs to avoid duplicates can occasionally break since the dependency may not be ready for the latest Nixpkgs, but this so far has only ever hit me with nix-vim, which arguably should be in Nixpkgs anyways in some form (although I haven't used it in a while so not sure what the status is.) Because you have to, I searched and found that at least one of my flakes are in there, nix-binary-ninja, which is a Nix flake for the proprietary Binary Ninja disassembler/decompiler. Neat. (FYI though, while I use that, I'm not sure I actually recommend it; it does gross things to make binja use system libraries for better integration, which right now breaks some extensions. Oh well...)
wredcoll 1mo ago
When I first met NixOS, it struck me as a super cool idea that would be incredibly useful just as soon as every other piece of software/programmer in the world converted to using it. I haven't seen anything to change my mind since.
- wredcoll 1mo ago
  To elaborate in a way that will make absolutely everyone unhappy, framework vs library is a decent analogy here and nixos is very definitely a framework. Compare that to systemd, which despite having more tentacles than your average jellyfish, is actually a library, relative to "linux" as a whole. It's one reason it has more adoption.
- televisionsaval 1mo ago
  I don't really get the idea of needing converts when nixpkgs is basically the largest and most up to date.. Using another Linux as a system engineer you would certainly know how to build outside the package system because you would have to.
  - wredcoll 1mo ago
    The point is that, from my perspective, the value proposition rapidly diminishes when you start needing to special case things to live inside the nixos configuration world. Other people might be getting different benefits. (Really this is just the configuration file vs language conflict, again. Oh, this is too complicated, make a config file, oh my config file can't express this special case lets add language features, why am I using a config language instead of a read language, oh this real language is too complicated...)
    - televisionsaval 1mo ago
      Sure, I generally didn't go very granular in things not meant for much distribution and then got somewhat less benefit (at least a condensed collection of the system's freakish config is in one source), but trying to go to that granularity level in other Linux I'd have to hope it was network related so editing network manager might be enough and then well, I'd still not follow through since that's maybe 18 months of babysitting for a small chance if the thing isn't obscure.

92 points by ingve 1mo ago

digdugdirk 1mo ago

[flagged]

sivakon 1mo ago
> I'm a software engineer, father and wishful amateur surfer. If you've come seeking my political views, you've found the wrong Fareed. this is on their about page
mcmcmc 1mo ago
This is not the plagiarist political commentator. From the author’s about page: > I'm a software engineer, father and wishful amateur surfer. If you've come seeking my political views, you've found the wrong Fareed.
markasoftware 1mo ago
Please be satire

AyanamiKaine 1mo ago

Wow, it looks really cool! I will definitely try it! If there is one think that breaks me is always chasing that one shared library for example when developing something using SDl3 and its GPU API.

LogTrim 1mo ago

[flagged]

jchw 1mo ago

I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea per se, but hell, what's the point in making everything properly lazy if you couldn't. I mean me personally, I routinely use 20-30 flake inputs for large system configurations and I've never really minded this at all. The only real concern I have is that overriding Nixpkgs to avoid duplicates can occasionally break since the dependency may not be ready for the latest Nixpkgs, but this so far has only ever hit me with nix-vim, which arguably should be in Nixpkgs anyways in some form (although I haven't used it in a while so not sure what the status is.) Because you have to, I searched and found that at least one of my flakes are in there, nix-binary-ninja, which is a Nix flake for the proprietary Binary Ninja disassembler/decompiler. Neat. (FYI though, while I use that, I'm not sure I actually recommend it; it does gross things to make binja use system libraries for better integration, which right now breaks some extensions. Oh well...)

wredcoll 1mo ago

When I first met NixOS, it struck me as a super cool idea that would be incredibly useful just as soon as every other piece of software/programmer in the world converted to using it. I haven't seen anything to change my mind since.

wredcoll 1mo ago
To elaborate in a way that will make absolutely everyone unhappy, framework vs library is a decent analogy here and nixos is very definitely a framework. Compare that to systemd, which despite having more tentacles than your average jellyfish, is actually a library, relative to "linux" as a whole. It's one reason it has more adoption.
televisionsaval 1mo ago
I don't really get the idea of needing converts when nixpkgs is basically the largest and most up to date.. Using another Linux as a system engineer you would certainly know how to build outside the package system because you would have to.
- wredcoll 1mo ago
  The point is that, from my perspective, the value proposition rapidly diminishes when you start needing to special case things to live inside the nixos configuration world. Other people might be getting different benefits. (Really this is just the configuration file vs language conflict, again. Oh, this is too complicated, make a config file, oh my config file can't express this special case lets add language features, why am I using a config language instead of a read language, oh this real language is too complicated...)
  - televisionsaval 1mo ago
    Sure, I generally didn't go very granular in things not meant for much distribution and then got somewhat less benefit (at least a condensed collection of the system's freakish config is in one source), but trying to go to that granularity level in other Linux I'd have to hope it was network related so editing network manager might be enough and then well, I'd still not follow through since that's maybe 18 months of babysitting for a small chance if the thing isn't obscure.