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Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

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Re: Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

#11

Post by rajivmr »

hamandcheese wrote: post #9

This is really cool, but I don’t know if I see the appeal for actual nix users — if you are a nix user and have it set up in CI, you can easily build docker images yourself using buildLayeredImage. And then if you aren’t a nix user, why would you use this? Installing packages with, say, apt, is decidedly not where my pains with docker have arose.

That's correct. I recently ended up using `buildLayerImage` (actually `buildLayerImageWithNixDb`) for CI, not only to run a single process, but also `systemd` and multiple processes. `podman` comes with built-in support for `systemd`.

[Here](https://github.com/fdb-rs/fdb/blob/fdb-0.2.2/nix/ci/flake.ni...) is relevant code.

Re: Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

#12

Post by nickysielicki »

I don’t know if it’s just because I hopped on the bandwagon in the past few months, but it really is starting to feel like Nix is gaining momentum.

You can use it on Mac, WSL, Ubuntu multiuser, Docker, in an nspawn container, or through NixOS on a drive. You can build a livecd iso or a Raspberry Pi image from the same flake that you use for everything else.

I work in embedded with Yocto every day, and I can’t help but think that Nix is going to eat their lunch in the next decade.

There’s really never been anything (usable) that’s like Nix. I think it’s inevitable that it takes over everything.

Re: Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

#13

Post by mateuszf »

nickysielicki wrote: post #12

I don’t know if it’s just because I hopped on the bandwagon in the past few months, but it really is starting to feel like Nix is gaining momentum. You can use it on Mac, WSL, Ubuntu multiuser, Docker, in an nspawn container, or through NixOS on a drive. You can build a livecd iso or a Raspberry Pi image from the same flake that you use for everything else. I work in embedded with Yocto every day, and I can’t help bu…

Not tried that but I've heard it's even possible to build custom Android distros.

Re: Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

#14

Post by nickysielicki »

mateuszf wrote: post #13
nickysielicki wrote: post #12

I don’t know if it’s just because I hopped on the bandwagon in the past few months, but it really is starting to feel like Nix is gaining momentum. You can use it on Mac, WSL, Ubuntu multiuser, Docker, in an nspawn container, or through NixOS on a drive. You can build a livecd iso or a Raspberry Pi image from the same flake that you use for everything else. I work in embedded with Yocto every day, and I can’t help bu…

Not tried that but I've heard it's even possible to build custom Android distros.

I know that there’s a very active matrix channel for Nix on ARM that is mostly dedicated to pinephone/smartphone projects, so I imagine there’s some android tooling there but I don’t think it’s “android” in the AOSP sense.

Re: Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

#15

Post by zimbatm »

mateuszf wrote: post #13
nickysielicki wrote: post #12

I don’t know if it’s just because I hopped on the bandwagon in the past few months, but it really is starting to feel like Nix is gaining momentum. You can use it on Mac, WSL, Ubuntu multiuser, Docker, in an nspawn container, or through NixOS on a drive. You can build a livecd iso or a Raspberry Pi image from the same flake that you use for everything else. I work in embedded with Yocto every day, and I can’t help bu…

Not tried that but I've heard it's even possible to build custom Android distros.

samueldr has been doing a lot of good work in that direction. See https://mobile.nixos.org/ and https://github.com/samueldr/

Re: Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

#16

Post by yakak »

nickysielicki wrote: post #14
mateuszf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not tried that but I've heard it's even possible to build custom Android distros.

I know that there’s a very active matrix channel for Nix on ARM that is mostly dedicated to pinephone/smartphone projects, so I imagine there’s some android tooling there but I don’t think it’s “android” in the AOSP sense.

There is an AOSP/etc dist building on nix project called robotnix. It has little to do with nixOS on Arm, so it is rarely mentioned on that channel.

Re: Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

#17

Post by unicornmama »

exdsq wrote: post #4

Oh great! More indirection. Now when I want to deploy my web app I can check my private nixery.dev deployment is properly configured in Nix to build my Docker images so I can deploy my containers to the cloud so someone can access me Rest API. And the cost of guaranteeing builds will probably work? Running your own nixery service, learning Nix, and learning Docker. I would love someone to do a cost-benefit analysis o…

Nix makes a lot of sense if you really understand build system.

But makes less sense if you understand operations, or management.

Real world engineering is about trade-offs, and Nix has no wiggle room for compromise. It’s optimizes on one dimension: Reproducible builds. But an organisation won’t succeed when it places the needs of build system engineers on a pedestal.

Re: Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

#18

Post by BreakfastB0b »

nickysielicki wrote: post #12

I don’t know if it’s just because I hopped on the bandwagon in the past few months, but it really is starting to feel like Nix is gaining momentum. You can use it on Mac, WSL, Ubuntu multiuser, Docker, in an nspawn container, or through NixOS on a drive. You can build a livecd iso or a Raspberry Pi image from the same flake that you use for everything else. I work in embedded with Yocto every day, and I can’t help bu…

We recently adopted it at my company for managing local dev machines, project environments, and CI. It definitely has some warts, often the best documentation is “read the source code”, but man is it an awesome tool. I’ve switched all of my machines / servers over to it and I’ll never look back.

Now I’m looking at my iPad and iPhone and wishing I could manage them through Nix too.

I’d put it at a comparable difficulty to learn / powerful tool as git. Which given that they’re both based on hash trees makes sense.

Re: Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

#19

Post by WJW »

hamandcheese wrote: post #7
exdsq wrote: post #4

Oh great! More indirection. Now when I want to deploy my web app I can check my private nixery.dev deployment is properly configured in Nix to build my Docker images so I can deploy my containers to the cloud so someone can access me Rest API. And the cost of guaranteeing builds will probably work? Running your own nixery service, learning Nix, and learning Docker. I would love someone to do a cost-benefit analysis o…

Do you actually use nix and have an experience to share?

Not OP, but the evangelism about "never having build problems anymore" does perplex me a bit. In the languages I have been programming in (Haskell, Ruby, some Python and elm and JS and Rust), I can't recall having any significant build problems in the last ~8 years or so anyway. What does everyone do that their build keeps breaking?

Re: Nixery – Docker images on the fly with Nix

#20

Post by imhoguy »

nickysielicki wrote: post #12

I don’t know if it’s just because I hopped on the bandwagon in the past few months, but it really is starting to feel like Nix is gaining momentum. You can use it on Mac, WSL, Ubuntu multiuser, Docker, in an nspawn container, or through NixOS on a drive. You can build a livecd iso or a Raspberry Pi image from the same flake that you use for everything else. I work in embedded with Yocto every day, and I can’t help bu…

qq: Any good tutorials to get up to speed with NixOS with 64-bit Raspberry Pi Zero 2 please?

I have a plan to thinker with some off-grid IoT this year, good moment to try something new, like Nix, than continue with Ansible which unfortunately gets out of hand with very long lasting installations - no implicit cleanup of removed resources and lack of build reproducibility (apt-get update issue really).

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