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Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

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Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

#31

Post by eulenteufel »

phaer wrote: post #9

Great introduction and overview on the theoretic foundations of the nix ecosystem! For people new to it, I am trying to provide a quick glossary of terms here, as I understand them after about 2 years of using nix. * nix: a language to create derivations and the interpreter/package-manager which provides the implementation of said language. It currently offers two command-line interfaces, the stable on with hyphenate…

I'll consider flakes usable for packaging software when they support passing options. The respective issue [0] has been closed unfortunately. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what flakes are meant to be (a more formalized standard way to define nix packages and apps), but a lot packages in nixpkgs have a plethora of parameters that as of now can not really be mapped to a functionality in nix flakes.

[0] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2861

Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

#32

Post by breakds »

candiddevmike wrote: post #30

Does Nix still build a lot of things from source? When I tried it a while ago everything took forever to install because it was compiling locally. Do they have the concept of repos and repo mirroring?

Yes it by default build everything from source. However, most of the packages will have binary cache on https://cache.nixos.org/ so that your installation or update will download them instead of building them. Also you can setup your own binary cache (https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Binary_Cache) and building machine to make your own projects build faster.

Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

#33

Post by pxc »

hailwren wrote: post #28
rgoulter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

An unfortunate huge one is any way to interact w/ Intel Optimus. I can't be the only dev that wants to eat my gpu cake and have my battery life optimization cake too. Bumblebee and optimus-manager both solve this in the aur.

Bumblebee is well-supported in NixOS. My last mobile NVIDIA hardware has died, but I used it Bumblebee on NixOS for years.

https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=22.05&from=0&size=5...

https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=22.05&show=hardware...

Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

#34

Post by agentultra »

Nix seems great for build servers. This is a great introduction to the motivations behind it.

I'm not sold on using it for managing developer environments (another use case it is often used for). It "solves" the problem that developers might be using different versions of libraries or compilers on their machines... but it comes at the cost of having to learn a whole new programming language, a configuration language, a whole new jargon, and workflow. It's a bit like using Docker as a development environment. It introduces a non-trivial amount of friction.

Some folks get excited about package management and configuration. Personally I don't care for it enough to over-come such a high learning curve. And I don't particularly like the workflow it enforces.

However it is pretty great for reproducible CI/CD systems like Hydra: https://github.com/NixOS/hydra

Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

#35

Post by mikepurvis »

grumbel wrote: post #21
nixpulvis wrote: post #13

Nix 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…

> Nix needs a new porcelain interface for it's CLIs. It already has one with the 'nix' command, it just needs to be manually enabled under 'experimental-features', but once done there is basically no reason to ever touch any of the old commands.

Yup. I started with Nix a little over a year ago on Nix 2.3, and have only ever used flakes and the new CLI. It's complete from my point of view— the main issue is just that the pills and all the official documentation still refer to the old commands.

I wish they'd flip it over to being the default and update the docs. I know that's not trivial, and it's hard when all the long-time community members have the legacy commands in their muscle memory, but IMO the current state of affairs is actively hurting the onboard experience.

Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

#36

Post by ryukafalz »

jnxx wrote: post #15
nixpulvis wrote: post #13

Nix 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…

I much prefer Guix UI-wise but it has some downsides:

— I’ve had more jank on Guix System as a desktop OS than on NixOS. Specifically some dbus-related stuff like notifications and appindicators (when running sway + waybar) has been very unreliable for me under Guix in ways that it hasn’t been on any other distro I’ve tried including NixOS. Still haven’t figured out why.

- Guix is slow compared to Nix. This is especially noticeable on older/weaker hardware.

- Nix home-manager has a lot more options than Guix’s equivalent - it’s really nice being able to rely on it for things like sway configuration.

That said, between the two I do lean towards Guix because I do gravitate towards Scheme more than the Nix DSL. I just wish it were a bit more polished.

Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

#37

Post by alberth »

nixpulvis wrote: post #13

Nix 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…

> Nix needs a new porcelain interface for it's CLIs.

The analogy I'd use is that Nix needs what "Github did for Git". Meaning, git is actually unnecessarily complex. But Github made git easy and accessible.

Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

#38

Post by pxc »

eulenteufel wrote: post #31
phaer wrote: post #9

Great introduction and overview on the theoretic foundations of the nix ecosystem! For people new to it, I am trying to provide a quick glossary of terms here, as I understand them after about 2 years of using nix. * nix: a language to create derivations and the interpreter/package-manager which provides the implementation of said language. It currently offers two command-line interfaces, the stable on with hyphenate…

I'll consider flakes usable for packaging software when they support passing options. The respective issue [0] has been closed unfortunately. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what flakes are meant to be (a more formalized standard way to define nix packages and apps), but a lot packages in nixpkgs have a plethora of parameters that as of now can not really be mapped to a functionality in nix flakes. [0] https://github.c…

Depending on your specific needs, the channelsConfig (modify arguments passed to Nixpkgs) and overlay tooling in flake-utils-plus may be adequate: https://github.com/gytis-ivaskevicius/flake-utils-plus/tree/...

You can take a package from a flake input and call it with other args in your overlays, for example

Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

#39

Post by mattarm »

ryukafalz wrote: post #36
jnxx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I much prefer Guix UI-wise but it has some downsides: — I’ve had more jank on Guix System as a desktop OS than on NixOS. Specifically some dbus-related stuff like notifications and appindicators (when running sway + waybar) has been very unreliable for me under Guix in ways that it hasn’t been on any other distro I’ve tried including NixOS. Still haven’t figured out why. - Guix is slow compared to Nix. This is especi…

Nix also runs on macOS. I think it gets a lot more traction among devs than Guix does for this reason alone.

Re: Nix: Taming Unix with Functional Programming

#40

Post by mattarm »

grumbel wrote: post #21
nixpulvis wrote: post #13

Nix 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…

> Nix needs a new porcelain interface for it's CLIs. It already has one with the 'nix' command, it just needs to be manually enabled under 'experimental-features', but once done there is basically no reason to ever touch any of the old commands.

> it just needs to be manually enabled under 'experimental-features'

Same with flakes. My impression is that Nix is either on the cusp of a major paradigm and usability change, or the status quo will be forever in a state of having "wrong defaults."

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