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What Is Nix?

engineering.shopify.com

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Re: What Is Nix?

#231

Post by [deleted] »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #192
nerdponx wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'd really like to see is a realistic, end-to-end tutorial for either 1) deploying a relatively straightforward web application (like Dokuwiki or ZNC), or 2) setting up a basic desktop for day-to-day use. I feel like I've seen a lot of "snippets", I feel like I understand how Nix works and what it's supposed to be good for, but I don't have a coherent sense of the steps involved in actually using it for mundane…

Look for nix users' "this is not a dotfiles repo" repo on GitHub.

[deleted]

Re: What Is Nix?

#232

Post by rgoulter »

nerdponx wrote: post #139
nilkn wrote: post #129

This article is a good explanation of how nix works at a high level, and I'm excited to see nix getting some really prominent support, but for some reason it never tells you what the point of all of this is, so I think many folks might feel turned off by it. In other words, I don't believe it ever compellingly answers the question that constitutes its title. The word "package" doesn't even appear until near the end o…

What I'd really like to see is a realistic, end-to-end tutorial for either 1) deploying a relatively straightforward web application (like Dokuwiki or ZNC), or 2) setting up a basic desktop for day-to-day use. I feel like I've seen a lot of "snippets", I feel like I understand how Nix works and what it's supposed to be good for, but I don't have a coherent sense of the steps involved in actually using it for mundane…

For usage of "setting up a basic desktop for day-to-day use", to use nix to just mundanely install a list of packages:

What I have is a "myPackages.nix" that I symlink into ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays https://github.com/rgoulter/dotfiles/blob/22ebe20a820a1adf64...

After installing nixpkgs tool, I can then run "nix-env --install --attr nixpkgs.myPackages" to install that.

Re: What Is Nix?

#233

Post by sfj »

amelius wrote: post #197
Ericson2314 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nixpkgs has already done much of that work for you, thankfully.

Yes that's true. But some things remain difficult, for example installing the latest version of CUDA. https://discourse.nixos.org/t/cuda-setup-on-nixos/1118/9

Funny, I was able to install it (for use with pytorch) just a few days ago without a hitch.

Re: What Is Nix?

#234

Post by microtonal »

aeontech wrote: post #97
ninetax wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately there's a pretty annoying bug with MacOS which resulted from Apple making /nix non-writable by default. And since /nix is hard coded in all the cached packages it's not easy to fix. This is one big thing that's preventing us from adopting nix https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2925

It's not a bug in macOS, it's a security feature. However, you can use synthetic firmlinks to define arbitrary root-level paths that _are_ writable. See `man synthetic.conf` and check out https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2020/01/18/creating-root-l... for an example usage. PS: It looks like nix has a PR open to test that solution here: https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/3212

However, you can use synthetic firmlinks to define arbitrary root-level paths that _are_ writable.

See `man synthetic.conf`

No, synthetic.conf only creates directories or symlinks. If it actually created firmlinks, the problem would probably be much smaller.

The problem with symlinks is that some builds use realpath. If /nix was a symlink to e.g. /usr/local/nix, this would result in /usr/local/nix being used in this builds. This leads to various build problems [1] and can result in the wrong paths ending up in binaries. If this happens on a builder, the resulting binaries are not portable between macOS + Nix machines.

So, instead the only way to get it currently working is to use synthetic.conf to create a new top-level directory and mount a APFS volume with the Nix store there.

If Apple actually allowed creating firmlinks with synthetic.conf, the Nix installation would be drastically simplified. /nix could just be a firmlink to e.g. /usr/local/nix, since realpath does not report the actual path on firmlinks.

[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2926#issuecomment-559989...

Re: What Is Nix?

#235

Post by takeda »

burke wrote: post #56
lmickh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burke Libbey has a few talks that are available on YouTube including a presentation at NixCon about the work he is doing at Shopify. I would highly recommend checking them out if you are interested in Nix.

Hi! Yes, and here's the link to my recent Nixology playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRGI9KQ3_HP_OFRG6R-p4...

This is great, thank you.

Can you provide more information about setting a build infrastructure in an organization. Particularly how to set up a shared cache so if one user builds something it is available to others?

Re: What Is Nix?

#236

Post by takeda »

Gaelan wrote: post #145
squid_demon wrote: post #110

"All software exists in a graph of dependencies." And some of these graphs consist of a single node. Junk the jank!

I mean, if you count the compiler/interpreter (which nix does), realistically that's a bare minimum of two.

Nix comes with its own glibc, so that's 3, although I guess while it is not the default you could compile statically.

Re: What Is Nix?

#237

Post by geofft »

somatic wrote: post #187
yawaramin wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the removed code: test("guy", function() { assert.equal(typeof babel.guy, "string"); }); Facepalming so hard right now

That’s a quality test. Don’t you feel more comfortable? Your browsing experience is in good hands.

Thank you for heavily derailing the productive, technically meaningful conversation I was having. Next time I won't say anything since apparently productive and technically meaningful conversations aren't what this site is for.

Re: What Is Nix?

#238

Post by _hl_ »

matthewbauer wrote: post #109
_hl_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I don't see why it wouldn't work on Windows natively. Sure, it would probably need a complete reimplementation to replace all the POSIX stuff with Windows stuff, but fundamentally it ought to be possible?

The biggest issue IIRC is that Bash doesn't play well with Windows. Things like paths are handled different enough to cause lots of breakage. We could rewrite all of the Bash in Perl or Python, which has better cross-platform support, but that's a lot of work. That said, there have been attempts to get native Windows support: https://github.com/volth/nix-windows/commits/windows

Why rely on bash? Windows has Powershell and symlinks, what else is needed to create a nix-style package manager for Windows?

I'm not saying it's a good idea, I don't think anyone would really want that, but it could be done.

Re: What Is Nix?

#239

Post by sandGorgon »

is there still relevance for this way of building in the world of Docker - especially with Packer and LinuxKit ?

Packer allows us to create highly repeatable OS builds with all the right configuration and packaging. For example, this is AWS official Packer build for their EKS AMIs - https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-eks-ami

Re: What Is Nix?

#240

Post by voppe »

The only takeaway I get from this article is...

Why is Nix?

And from skimming along the comments, both on HN and on Disqus, there's a lot of confused people trying to understand/describe the difference between Nix and Docker, because although the article described how Nix works in a very technical way, it didn't explain what it can be actually used for.

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