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I tried NixOS once and the overall impression was: it's magic. I mean, you know, when you are installing tools on relatively "clean" distro, like Arch, there us

by krick 12y ago

I tried NixOS once and the overall impression was: it's magic. I mean, you know, when you are installing tools on relatively "clean" distro, like Arch, there usually something fails, and you have to try this and that, tweak something, and it is good old "linux way". And NixOS is something so elegant and beautiful, so mathematically "right", that I subconsciously expect that it wouldn't actually work, and yet it does. I tell it what I want to get (relatively marginal configuration, btw) and it configures installation just right. I break something and it rolls back without a problem. So the main question I've had ever since: why this stuff isn't popular enough yet.

nextos 12y ago
Nix is nice. However, some practical aspects are (still?) quite ugly. It lacks decoupling between packages and optional runtime dependencies. You can disable optional dependencies, but this would lead to a different package hash negating the use of prebuilt binaries. Therefore, the culture seems to have all default package builds with all optional dependencies on. This leads to situations such as installing mutt and getting python too! (mutt -> gpgme -> glib -> python) Last time I checked, if you installed git, you'd also get subversion, etc. Quite sad, given that nix is full of so many fantastic ideas. Hope it matures soon.
- ArchD 12y ago
  I think you could define your own mutt package that doesn't have the optional stuff, although it may be a lot of work.
  - barkmadley 12y ago
    I don't know much about the nix language, but it looks to me like the gpgme support is optional: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applications/networking/mailreaders/mutt/default.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applicatio...
    - nextos 12y ago
      The thing is easy to fix. The problem is that (i) most packages are far from minimal (ii) you loose pre-built binaries.
      - barkmadley 12y ago
        True enough. I wonder how much of the problem comes from trying to be compatible with software packages designed for other systems.
- psibi 12y ago
  For git they have a minimal version too: dev::hlinux { /home/sibi }-> nix-env -i --dry-run git-minimal-2.1.4 (dry run; not doing anything) installing ‘git-minimal-2.1.4’ these paths will be fetched (11.69 MiB download, 69.16 MiB unpacked): /nix/store/4qh8anh4phwx3gmrn2k49zh5xbkn49ir-git-2.1.4 /nix/store/4x0w8x70j27jxmy9wsn7sijrjjzj3dgj-pcre-8.36 /nix/store/g9qkr44yllgy5cb03vmfdksmh3pbmp1s-gnugrep-2.20 /nix/store/gwcvzrwyvgkgwlrgfyj4gqvsqn5syv1c-expat-2.1.0 /nix/store/rhghn8brqrz4j5ndkhwnm4afqjvk7zi8-python-2.7.9
kasbah 12y ago
I tried NixOS and had a very different experience. It is still a very new project and I encountered some very strange behavior which might be bugs or the result of me not understanding fully what is going on. I think I understand the premise quite well, having learned Haskell to an intermediate level, but in the end things didn't really work as expected. It would have required a significant time effort from me to understand what is going on and get everything set up the way I want. I was just not willing to put that in at the time. I've gone back to Ubuntu for now. I am doing more and more Haskell development so I'll take another run at it or, at least, set up nixpkgs on Ubuntu but I will probably give the project some time to mature.
- ossreality 12y ago
  How do people write like 10 sentences like this and not include a single actual example of what went wrong. Only when it comes to any sort of Linux question are literally anecdotes of anecdotes accepted.

by krick 12y ago

nextos 12y ago

Nix is nice. However, some practical aspects are (still?) quite ugly. It lacks decoupling between packages and optional runtime dependencies. You can disable optional dependencies, but this would lead to a different package hash negating the use of prebuilt binaries. Therefore, the culture seems to have all default package builds with all optional dependencies on. This leads to situations such as installing mutt and getting python too! (mutt -> gpgme -> glib -> python) Last time I checked, if you installed git, you'd also get subversion, etc. Quite sad, given that nix is full of so many fantastic ideas. Hope it matures soon.

ArchD 12y ago
I think you could define your own mutt package that doesn't have the optional stuff, although it may be a lot of work.
- barkmadley 12y ago
  I don't know much about the nix language, but it looks to me like the gpgme support is optional: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applications/networking/mailreaders/mutt/default.nix https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applicatio...
  - nextos 12y ago
    The thing is easy to fix. The problem is that (i) most packages are far from minimal (ii) you loose pre-built binaries.
    - barkmadley 12y ago
      True enough. I wonder how much of the problem comes from trying to be compatible with software packages designed for other systems.
psibi 12y ago
For git they have a minimal version too: dev::hlinux { /home/sibi }-> nix-env -i --dry-run git-minimal-2.1.4 (dry run; not doing anything) installing ‘git-minimal-2.1.4’ these paths will be fetched (11.69 MiB download, 69.16 MiB unpacked): /nix/store/4qh8anh4phwx3gmrn2k49zh5xbkn49ir-git-2.1.4 /nix/store/4x0w8x70j27jxmy9wsn7sijrjjzj3dgj-pcre-8.36 /nix/store/g9qkr44yllgy5cb03vmfdksmh3pbmp1s-gnugrep-2.20 /nix/store/gwcvzrwyvgkgwlrgfyj4gqvsqn5syv1c-expat-2.1.0 /nix/store/rhghn8brqrz4j5ndkhwnm4afqjvk7zi8-python-2.7.9

kasbah 12y ago

I tried NixOS and had a very different experience. It is still a very new project and I encountered some very strange behavior which might be bugs or the result of me not understanding fully what is going on. I think I understand the premise quite well, having learned Haskell to an intermediate level, but in the end things didn't really work as expected. It would have required a significant time effort from me to understand what is going on and get everything set up the way I want. I was just not willing to put that in at the time. I've gone back to Ubuntu for now. I am doing more and more Haskell development so I'll take another run at it or, at least, set up nixpkgs on Ubuntu but I will probably give the project some time to mature.

ossreality 12y ago
How do people write like 10 sentences like this and not include a single actual example of what went wrong. Only when it comes to any sort of Linux question are literally anecdotes of anecdotes accepted.