If you haven't read the original LISA paper on nix, it's a great read. So far it's the best resource I've found that documents what nix is, why it exists, and what it's solving: https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/nspfssd-lisa2004-final.pdf
Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
11–20 of 205 posts
Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
#12A few years ago I heard about Nix and NixOS. I loved the idea, but I did not enjoy the experience. Maybe the problem was I was trying to make it work on a less well-supported platform (I think it was ARM32). But the packages I wanted to install either weren't available, or I kept getting incompatibility errors. I still love the idea, but these days I feel like environment managers like Anaconda make (mutable) Python…
For x86, the package availability is almost unparalleled. NixOS also has tools and options which are not all pure and declarative, they're just not considered, "the way." I find NixOS to have a bit of a high learning curve, but worth it for the power and reproducibility.
> For x86, the package availability is almost unparalleled.
https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/total In terms of total number of packages, nixpkgs unstable is at 72k, while AUR is at 68k.
I'd bet there are many caveats, though.
Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
#13Nix needs a new porcelain interface for it's CLIs.
Moreover, this post sums up one of my biggest issues stopping me from trying Nix for real again: https://ianthehenry.com/posts/how-to-learn-nix/ambiguous-pac...
Finally, needing to rewrite everything in Nix is nice for poorly written configurations or undocumented packages in general, but seems redundant for well maintained software. Has anyone else come up with a sane Nix strategy to avoid the overhead?
Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
#14A few years ago I heard about Nix and NixOS. I loved the idea, but I did not enjoy the experience. Maybe the problem was I was trying to make it work on a less well-supported platform (I think it was ARM32). But the packages I wanted to install either weren't available, or I kept getting incompatibility errors. I still love the idea, but these days I feel like environment managers like Anaconda make (mutable) Python…
I recently tried Guix which is somewhat similar to Nix in theory. While I loved the idea I did not love dealing with cryptic problems resulting from it. For example I ran into an issue where one R package would only work properly if I installed other packages in a specific order, doing an update though could mess up that order breaking the package. Later updates to R broke support for certain things entirely that I d…
I am not sure, but it is possible that R want to be its own package manager which interferes with Guix? A similar problem seems to appear in Python, where there on Distributions like Debian there is kind of a struggle which package manager - the system-defined packages, or the user-defined ones like pip - have the last word.
I have used Guix a bit with Common Lisp libraries, and that works like a charm. I also found it useful to be able to use new Emacs packages like the newest version of Magit, without having to install or supersede the OS installation.
Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
#15Nix needs a new porcelain interface for it's CLIs. Moreover, this post sums up one of my biggest issues stopping me from trying Nix for real again: https://ianthehenry.com/posts/how-to-learn-nix/ambiguous-pac... Finally, needing to rewrite everything in Nix is nice for poorly written configurations or undocumented packages in general, but seems redundant for well maintained software. Has anyone else come up with a sa…
I have tried Guix (as a package manager), and it seems much better documented.
I also really like the fact that Guix uses a well-established, minimalistic, well-implemented, functional-preferred configuration language, which is Guile, the GNU implementation of Scheme, which is very much tailored to be extended with and embedded in other software, for example written in C. In part, my love comes from having had to use the alternatives: Huge configuration files written in YAML, for example, with no real documentation what all the keywords really mean, or things such as Conan, which appear declarative and are.... whatever.
Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently tried Guix which is somewhat similar to Nix in theory. While I loved the idea I did not love dealing with cryptic problems resulting from it. For example I ran into an issue where one R package would only work properly if I installed other packages in a specific order, doing an update though could mess up that order breaking the package. Later updates to R broke support for certain things entirely that I d…
I am not sure, but it is possible that R want to be its own package manager which interferes with Guix? A similar problem seems to appear in Python, where there on Distributions like Debian there is kind of a struggle which package manager - the system-defined packages, or the user-defined ones like pip - have the last word. I have used Guix a bit with Common Lisp libraries, and that works like a charm. I also found…
R does have it's own package manager but I was explicitly not using it because I read there could be issues, instead only installing packages through Guix. It was mainly a problem compiling things within R as if the order of how gcc-toolchain and the R package were setup it straight up wouldn't work. With later versions it just broke entirely and I never managed to fix it.
Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
#17Nix is React for system configuration.
Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
#18A few years ago I heard about Nix and NixOS. I loved the idea, but I did not enjoy the experience. Maybe the problem was I was trying to make it work on a less well-supported platform (I think it was ARM32). But the packages I wanted to install either weren't available, or I kept getting incompatibility errors. I still love the idea, but these days I feel like environment managers like Anaconda make (mutable) Python…
I don't think the problem you encountered is due to immutability, the problem is due to the implementation, which is now improved due to better documentation and more package support. The possibility of mutation alone will break a lot of assumptions and make program analysis a lot harder. I personally prefer no mutation at all or only when wrapped inside a cell (UnsafeCell), similar to rust. For the latter kind, we c…
That's fair. I blamed immutability when I should have blamed the implementation. Thanks for helping me realize my mistake. :)
Availability of packages is what makes or breaks a distribution, though. If I can't (easily) install the software I need to do my job, I choose a distribution that can. My home Ubuntu server isn't bringing me joy, so maybe now's a good time to give Nix another shot.
Fingers crossed for Nvidia driver support...
Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
#19> Which other results from programming language theory and mathematics will we be able to leverage to make software build quickly, work reliably, and further tame Unix?
I think Apenwarr's redo (https://redo.readthedocs.io/en/latest/), based on an idea from D.J. Bernstein, is a very interesting development, because it also has the "purely functional" principle at its core - and this allows for much faster parallel builds.
Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the problem you encountered is due to immutability, the problem is due to the implementation, which is now improved due to better documentation and more package support. The possibility of mutation alone will break a lot of assumptions and make program analysis a lot harder. I personally prefer no mutation at all or only when wrapped inside a cell (UnsafeCell), similar to rust. For the latter kind, we c…
That's fair. I blamed immutability when I should have blamed the implementation. Thanks for helping me realize my mistake. :) Availability of packages is what makes or breaks a distribution, though. If I can't (easily) install the software I need to do my job, I choose a distribution that can. My home Ubuntu server isn't bringing me joy, so maybe now's a good time to give Nix another shot. Fingers crossed for Nvidia…
In my experience the Nvidia driver support has been pretty painless (once you figure out the correct settings in configuration.nix of course), and the availability of packages is by far the best of any linux distro I've used.