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Will Nix Overtake Docker?

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Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#231

Post by Apofis »

salamander014 wrote: post #9

I think people are missing the forest for the trees with this. In my view, the reason Docker has all the hype is because I can look at a Dockerfile, and know what's up. In seconds. Sometimes in milliseconds. It's a user experience thing. Yes, Nix is better for 'technical people that spent the time learning the tool', but Dockerfiles rely almost entirely on existing System knowledge. Yes, Nix is 'better', but the fact…

I'm a big fan of Docker-Compose so far because of it's powerful simplicity and it's introducing me to GitOps, Infrastructure-As-Code, and Terraform, all of which I'm really starting to like... and I really hate doing DevOps work.

I think your point is very valid, it has got to be simple and increase productivity instead of impede it. Using something better but getting stuck in the minutia every day is a waste, and not something anybody in senior leadership should ever approve.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#232

Post by jokethrowaway »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #177
throwaway894345 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mirrors my experience as a developer in an org that used Nix. If you want the dev team to have a strong dependency on the devops team for every little (often unpredictable) aspect of their workflow, Nix is the tool for the job. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely bought in on the vision of reproducible builds but there’s a long ways to go before it’s usable in real organizations. I’ve heard that some orgs manage…

> If you want the dev team to have a strong dependency on the devops team for every little (often unpredictable) aspect of their workflow, I have never used nix, but from the article the author only concentrated on the fact that docker and nix create reproducible environments, and completely misses the other benefits of containers. As a devops guy if someone hands me a nix project, how do I deploy that so it is highl…

That's because nix is not a docker alternative.

I'd love a nix-like docker alternative to be fair but that'd be a massive undertaking.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#233

Post by lolpython »

soraminazuki wrote: post #222
lolpython wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am frustrated that you ignored my main argument about Docker sufficiently serving the same business function as Nix, with lower maintenance. Instead you focused on a semantic argument about one word in my post - "reproducible". You have the wrong idea about reproducibility, where you say basically everything that is not Nix or Guix is not reproducible. This ignores things like conda and techniques like package vers…

> I am frustrated that you ignored my main argument Your main argument was that Docker "sufficiently" serves the same goal of reproducibility. I just pointed out how it doesn't come anywhere close. Addressing the core of an argument is far from a "semantic" argument. > where you say basically everything that is not Nix or Guix is not reproducible My definition of reproducibility is that you get identical build result…

> You must really dislike it [Nix] if you can convince yourself that is fair comparison.

No, I do not give a single fuck about Nix versus Docker. I have no personal attachment to either. I am just worried that pushing Nix at my company would be some form of professional malpractice given the downsides. I literally have a meeting tomorrow about incorporating Docker into a different team's product. I've used both Docker and Nix before. If Nix would be better for them, I would tell them as much. I'd be fine continuing this discussion we are having, some parts were interesting. But unfortunately you seem incapable of formulating an argument without resorting to personal attacks and condescension. And I cannot tolerate that.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#234

Post by throwaway894345 »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #232
hitpointdrew wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want the dev team to have a strong dependency on the devops team for every little (often unpredictable) aspect of their workflow, I have never used nix, but from the article the author only concentrated on the fact that docker and nix create reproducible environments, and completely misses the other benefits of containers. As a devops guy if someone hands me a nix project, how do I deploy that so it is highl…

That's because nix is not a docker alternative. I'd love a nix-like docker alternative to be fair but that'd be a massive undertaking.

What is a "nix-like docker alternative"? Is that "using Nix to build container images"? Because Nix already does that.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#235

Post by linsomniac »

linsomniac wrote: post #7
bjtitus wrote: post #4

I've set up my new M1 MacBook Pro using Nix and it's been going relatively well. Home Manager manages global tooling like Neovim, random CLI tools, and config files while I've set up `default.nix` files to use with `nix-shell` per-project. The set up of each project can be a little tedious as I still find the language confusing but once everything is set up the reliable re-creation is excellent. I love the feeling of…

My MBP left Shenzen early this morning and I'm super interested in details of how you did this. Are there any examples of doing this that you followed or recommend? Ansible is more my tooling of choice, though I'm fascinated by Nix, but I wasn't sure even how to get started with using Ansible to set up the Mac.

I just watched this Jeff Geerling video about setting up his M1 Macs using Ansible and his provided playbooks. That's probably the direction I'll end up going. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VhPVu5EK5o

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#236

Post by exdsq »

wyager wrote: post #79
Barrin92 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Build times in Haskell were bad enough this one's very true. Every time I try to build something in Haskell on my laptop it feels like we're moving closer to the heat death of the universe. Is there some good read on how/why Haskell compilation times are so long compared to some other languages?

If you're compiling a project for the first time it's probably pulling in a ton of libraries and compiling them all from scratch. But let's be real here - we're talking maybe 3-5 minutes for the first build of a huge Haskell codebase, one or two orders of magnitude faster on second build. It seems comparable to what I've noticed with Rust or C, and pretty fast compared to some medium/large C++ codebases I've built. I…

I wish it took 3 - 5 minutes, I’ve built it projects that are far longer than that. I know this isn’t just me though, because the GHC build documentation tells you to go read stuff for a while as it builds. Longest I can remember is 2 hours.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#237

Post by exdsq »

nvarsj wrote: post #178
exdsq wrote: post #29

Oh god I hope not. Having worked in > 100kloc nix environments I am completely turned off of the idea. I really really tried, I installed NixOS as my main OS and used Nix whenever I could to try and pick it up, but it's such a complex beast I felt it slowed everything down. Simple tasks that would take 10 minutes in Docker suddenly became DevOps tickets. I suddenly had to write bindings for tools rather than apt-get…

I'd say don't blame the tool for what sounds like an architectural mess. TFA points out using nix as a reproducible build environment - which it is excellent at. Create a shell.nix in your repo, and every dev uses the same exact tools within the comfort of their own machine/shell. Docker is much more painful for this kind of local dev workflow.

Potentially it was a mess, but the guys building it contribute to nix so I don’t think that’s to blame. Dev environments are okay, but that’s not the limit of nix - it gets used for build servers, ci servers, linting, replacing stack cabal yarn etc, creating docker, hell I’m pretty sure I saw nix creating nix

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#238

Post by mmcnl »

kaba0 wrote: post #112
salamander014 wrote: post #9

I think people are missing the forest for the trees with this. In my view, the reason Docker has all the hype is because I can look at a Dockerfile, and know what's up. In seconds. Sometimes in milliseconds. It's a user experience thing. Yes, Nix is better for 'technical people that spent the time learning the tool', but Dockerfiles rely almost entirely on existing System knowledge. Yes, Nix is 'better', but the fact…

That’s because Docker just pushes dependency management to one layer below, doesn’t solve it.

But 99% of the times that's exactly what you need.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#239

Post by kaladin-jasnah »

exdsq wrote: post #29

Oh god I hope not. Having worked in > 100kloc nix environments I am completely turned off of the idea. I really really tried, I installed NixOS as my main OS and used Nix whenever I could to try and pick it up, but it's such a complex beast I felt it slowed everything down. Simple tasks that would take 10 minutes in Docker suddenly became DevOps tickets. I suddenly had to write bindings for tools rather than apt-get…

I truly hope not as well. I spent an extensive period of time trying to learn Nix and integrate it into my homelab. Granted, it's not an enterprise environment, but it is the most painful, unstable, broken, buggy, bloated, hard-to-use, poorly-documented mess I've ever tried. I hope no one touches Nix with a ten-foot pole.

That's not to say it's not a great idea. It's just a huge pain to get to work, and the cost of trying to get a perfectly-working Nix environment is just *not* worth it. In my case, I was working with orchestrating virtual machines, which… well, there's a project called nixops that claims to do this. The thing is it flat-out didn't work half the time (also used python2.7 and I believe one of its dependencies were marked as insecure for a long period of time). I got so frustrated with this "advertised" nixops tool, that had to write my own replacement for nixops, and while it was a fun experience, I was so burnt-out from dealing with Nix and its breaking randomly every ten seconds, I just gave up on my homelab.

If you want any program that doesn't exist for Nix, you can't just use the program's build script. You have to manually make a Nix derivation, and then pray and hope it will actually compile. Want to deploy your Ruby on Rails application on NixOS? Prepare to spend three days trying to set this up, since there's only one other application and the entire process is poorly documented (even for a "regular" Ruby program that isn't Rails).

Without additional work, Nix will never be worth its cost (did I mention the interpreter took forever and sometimes failed on errors in files that had NOTHING to do with yours, leaving you to manually debug each line?). You could spend the days upon days upon days trying to get the damned thing to work for something far more useful instead. Since once you get Nix to work, it will break.

I'm sorry if I offended any Nix users/developers, but the product is just not ready for anything yet IMHO. I just don't have time to deal with it anymore, and I'd rather get on doing something more fun than dealing with a bloated, undocumented system that I can just replace with Docker and get my work done in 5 minutes instead of 5 days.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#240

Post by pxc »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #239
exdsq wrote: post #29

Oh god I hope not. Having worked in > 100kloc nix environments I am completely turned off of the idea. I really really tried, I installed NixOS as my main OS and used Nix whenever I could to try and pick it up, but it's such a complex beast I felt it slowed everything down. Simple tasks that would take 10 minutes in Docker suddenly became DevOps tickets. I suddenly had to write bindings for tools rather than apt-get…

I truly hope not as well. I spent an extensive period of time trying to learn Nix and integrate it into my homelab. Granted, it's not an enterprise environment, but it is the most painful, unstable, broken, buggy, bloated, hard-to-use, poorly-documented mess I've ever tried. I hope no one touches Nix with a ten-foot pole. That's not to say it's not a great idea. It's just a huge pain to get to work, and the cost of t…

> did I mention the interpreter took forever and sometimes failed on errors in files that had NOTHING to do with yours, leaving you to manually debug each line?

This is a common (and horrible) issue with dynamic languages that pass functions or blocks of code around. There have been some major improvements to Nix error messages which were included in the last release, and there's also ongoing work to address this through gradual typing.

There was a talk on the latter recently, with some examples that I think make the overall issue pretty clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0J-SclpRYE

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