Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

discourse.nixos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 214 posts

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#181

Post by farfatched »

jonringer117 wrote: post #99
nylonstrung wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most obvious cause was forcing BDFL and creator Eelco to step down https://lwn.net/Articles/970824/ The moderation team posted an open letter demanding he step down, among other reasons this accused him of jeopardizing the safety of people from "marginalized backgrounds" and allowing "fascists" in the community I have tried very hard to find any examples of what this is a actually referring to and genuinely have…

If you're unemployed enough, I have a long winded video on the 2022-2024 drama. From the perspective of the guy who was labeled a nazi and banned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp0FI8Gw1iA

This was such a sad period, and I'm still sad at how you were treated. I hope in cooler times that the lifetime ban is lifted.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#182

Post by alright2565 »

GreenDolphinSys wrote: post #149
hibikir wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets worse when you are not a solo dev, and there's sufficient variety on people's setups. Oops, someone updated a version, and then built things for just their processor, and now I am stuck in a 20 minute compilation loop because some bad pin. Debugging Nix problems like those makes me think that old Gentoo Linux back in 2005 was easy and user friendly.

Updating causing a rebuild isn't really a Nix or even a build tool problem though, is it? cache.nixos.org can't provide everything for every architecture all the time. With multiple types of machines involved, you want some sort of binary cache setup, ideally automated with CI. There's niks3 [0], celler [1] (a more active fork of attic [2]), hydra [3]. 0: https://github.com/Mic92/niks3 1: https://github.com/celler-ca…

Or my personal favorite, just an s3 bucket. In your CI's nix.conf:

    post-build-hook = .../upload-to-cache.sh
upload-to-cache.sh:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash
    set -euo pipefail
    set -f
    export IFS=' '
    exec "${NIX_CACHE_NIX_BIN:-nix}" copy --extra-experimental-features nix-command \
      --to "s3://my-cache-bucket?region=us-east-1" $OUT_PATHS
Set up environment variables as necessary for auth.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#183

Post by farfatched »

aliasxneo wrote: post #111
ronef wrote: post #48

For anyone reading this and jumping to a broader conclusion: the Nixpkgs core team disbanding does not mean Nixpkgs or Nix is dying. It does mean that this particular structure was not sustainable, very important contributors burnt out and we need to do better, faster. We need to continue learning from this and continue building a stronger ecosystem that prioritizes the contributors who are the only reason any of thi…

Correct, but it's another domino in a broader trend that appears to have a common root. It was only a year ago that the moderation team mass resigned pointing the finger at the steering committee [1]. It's not been the same people for the last two years, but clearly there must be systemic issues in the people getting elected to this board for there to be so many persistent problems. Also see roberth's resignation [2]…

roberth resigned from the Nix maintainer team, not the Steering Committee.

> So while I shouldn’t let myself be bullied away, I am stepping down from the Nix maintainer team.

> I am not as of now stepping down from the SC, because that would be irresponsible.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#184

Post by shakow »

mikepurvis wrote: post #31
klodolph wrote: post #20

There was a sweet spot in like 2024 when it seemed like everything was possible with Nix, but now it seems like everything “experimental” is permanently so (like flakes), packages I care about are not as fresh as I want, I have no mental recall for Nix commands… Meanwhile, my company is using Nix for everything heavily internally. Everyone gets their dependencies via Nix unless you are like using PAM or something. Re…

I was lead on a Nix adoption effort for a few years that was kind of like that: it solved real problems, unlocked far faster, smaller, and cheaper builds than would have been possible any other way, and let us ship delta updates over crappy wifi connections to Linux computers on robots. Flakes were a perfect fit for our model, and we were just in time for stuff like up to date versions of cuda and tensorflow to be de…

> let us ship delta updates over crappy wifi connections to Linux computers on robots

How were you doing that? Running your own channels, or something more complex?

Also, did you use a push or a pull model w.r.t. the robots?

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#185

Post by threethirtytwo »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #123
mikepurvis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was lead on a Nix adoption effort for a few years that was kind of like that: it solved real problems, unlocked far faster, smaller, and cheaper builds than would have been possible any other way, and let us ship delta updates over crappy wifi connections to Linux computers on robots. Flakes were a perfect fit for our model, and we were just in time for stuff like up to date versions of cuda and tensorflow to be de…

My gut feeling is that Nix is just not quite the right abstraction level. I can’t quite articulate this. And hell maybe I’m wrong. I don’t want to configure a global environment. I just want a build system that works reliably in any environment and can cross-compile from any platform to any platform. Nix does too damn much. All I want is a build system that doesn’t suck. And I want to run it on windows + Mac + Linux…

The truth is like the sun. The light from the sun touches everything, it's bright and it's obvious... yet no one can stare directly at it.

It's like saying obese people are not attractive. It's just obviously true, but no one likes to talk about it and many people (who are obese or aren't) don't want to hear it.

When you say this: "I don’t want to configure a global environment. I just want a build system that works reliably in any environment and can cross-compile from any platform to any platform."

The godawful truth is, Nix fails at the task above. It sucks at it and does a bad job at it because it's so freaking complex. Plenty of people in denial about this but they just can't stare at the sun. They build their complex convoluted solutions and convince themselves Nix was the way while blindly looking away from the pitfalls.

One commenter literally was talking about how his company adopted nix and how they suddenly backpedalled on nix and he COULD not understand why. If you are one of those people who cannot for the life of you understand I am here to tell you that why a company back pedals on nix is as obvious as the sun. You just can't stare at the sun or you don't understand humans.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#186

Post by TheFuzzball »

nextaccountic wrote: post #164
klodolph wrote: post #20

There was a sweet spot in like 2024 when it seemed like everything was possible with Nix, but now it seems like everything “experimental” is permanently so (like flakes), packages I care about are not as fresh as I want, I have no mental recall for Nix commands… Meanwhile, my company is using Nix for everything heavily internally. Everyone gets their dependencies via Nix unless you are like using PAM or something. Re…

Flakes must drop the "experimental" moniker and be officially supported by Nix. It may not be perfect, but it has been widely adopted.

That's already the case in determinate-nix. Flakes do have big problems though - try cloning a big data project with GBs of data and see how much you love flakes when it copies it to the store every time you run `nix run .#analysis`.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#187

Post by Y_Y »

aroman wrote: post #43
soupbowl wrote: post #25

After being a heavy user of NixOS, I quit using it due to the communities instability, I don't trust it.

What alternative have you moved on to?

Guix (and nonguix for nonfree things)

It's Nix on the inside but the language is Guile Scheme instead of Nix.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#188

Post by frantathefranta »

shakna wrote: post #90
frantathefranta wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will tell on myself here but having an anime pfp evokes something childish for me and I do judge the user based on it. I expect to be judged similarly because I use the album art for a favorite album of mine as a pfp on the same platform and would consider it equally inappropriate if I were to share a heartfelt and serious message like this one.

That sounds like you associate anime with childhood cartoons? But considering how much of that industry output is 16+ or 18+ (usually violence and themes), I'd say that is more of a cultural confabulation. I would absolutely not expect a business profile image, regardless of the message. Nor do I get why you think it is so essential. Half the red team industry are furries. Would you criticise them for not using a mug…

Yes, I do believe not having a pfp at all would be better (for disclosing CVEs or sharing a statement about disbanding the nixpkgs team). By all means use any pfp for normal forum purposes.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#189

Post by pbhjpbhj »

isdononthephone wrote: post #124
matheusmoreira wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not ask this? People are burning out here. Meanwhile corporations be making billions. I don't like that.

That's the social contract with open-source software. You are not owed a cent for your work. But they're not owed support either. On the other hand, building an entire company atop experimental software that might explode or cease to exist tomorrow seems so monumentally stupid that the inevitable business failure is the outcome they don't need, but so badly deserve.

>building an entire company atop experimental software that might explode or cease to exist tomorrow seems so monumentally stupid

All things come to an end. Why not ride the wave of a FOSS project, eg by offering support as a business. As long as you are prepared to pivot or close the business when it's no longer needed, why not?

It doesn't strike me as stupid.

Post reply on HN