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The Flox Open Beta

floxdev.com

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Re: The Flox Open Beta

#31

Post by bovermyer »

stavros wrote: post #25
bovermyer wrote: post #21

So it's kind of like machine configuration as code, with Nix doing the heavy lifting. That sounds interesting. However, I wonder how it deals with scenarios like using "flox pull" to do an initial setup, then manually installing something, then months later trying to reconcile what the code says should be installed and what's actually installed.

Have you used Nix? As far as I know, you can't manually install something, at all. You need to add it to the Nix config for it to go in the environment.

I tried once before on Mac, but never could get it working properly.

My impression of Nix on Mac is that it doesn't have exclusive control of your system, so it would be possible to install something outside of its control loop.

Re: The Flox Open Beta

#32

Post by hatross »

thenipper wrote: post #22

This looks pretty interesting. I'm a lead software eng at a startup that is onboarding N number data analysts/engineers and on the face of it this seems like it'd be a great utility to help tame the craziness of python for them.

I think you are right. Plus it's a great way to integrate needed dependencies in other languages, and pin them to the exact version you need. When you need to deploy, you can actually use flox on the production machine, and "flox install", or you can load the flox package into a docker container image and deploy that way too. I developed a Django app for about 2 months with flox, which included postgresql,redis, and several python3 pypi package deps. It was one of the best and most coherent experiences I have had. I also used nix (which flox is based on) to do elixir and phoenix development for several years. flox has taken away many of the pain points (disclaimer, I am employed at flox)>

Re: The Flox Open Beta

#33

Post by tomberek »

rockwotj wrote: post #28

This looks great! I'm interested to know what is the path forward to create revenue from this product? I would hesitant to adopt a tool like this that would go belly up when the money runs dry.

Very good question. How will we make money? What is our monetization strategy? We have nothing to hide here. Our monetization is focused on increasing corporate and organizational use.

  1. We love Nix and what we can do with it.
  2. We also know that it is not easy to learn or adopt Nix.
  3. Even if learning Nix would be easier, adoption of new tech becomes harder the bigger the organisation.
  4. The bigger the organisation, the “weirder” their requirements (from the perspective of an open source project). Not all of those requirements make sense to include in an open source version, but would make a big difference for enterprise adoption.
  5. We want to make it possible for you (the Nix user) to be able to bring Nix-based technology to your organizations and to be an effective ambassador.
  6. Enterprises require a different set of features than anyone else; and they will pay for them.

Re: The Flox Open Beta

#34

Post by rokgarbas »

thenipper wrote: post #22

This looks pretty interesting. I'm a lead software eng at a startup that is onboarding N number data analysts/engineers and on the face of it this seems like it'd be a great utility to help tame the craziness of python for them.

Thank you.

Would you be willing to give us a challenge in a form of example environment that your data analysts/engineers would use with only a `flox pull`?

Re: The Flox Open Beta

#35

Post by hatross »

rockwotj wrote: post #28

This looks great! I'm interested to know what is the path forward to create revenue from this product? I would hesitant to adopt a tool like this that would go belly up when the money runs dry.

Hi there! You'll see a number of announcements and releases over the next 3-8 months, as we continue to develop and evolve our open source release, and build tools for enterprise. flox is deeply integrated and committed to the open source nix community. The CEO of flox, Ron Efroni is on the nixos foundation board. Our work intends to be compatible with nix, and so we think this foundation will help people have some long term security if they invest in adopting flox.

flox will continue to be active in contributing to, and supporting and growing the nix community, while also growing a complimentary open source flox community.

Re: The Flox Open Beta

#36

Post by tomberek »

bovermyer wrote: post #31
stavros wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you used Nix? As far as I know, you can't manually install something, at all. You need to add it to the Nix config for it to go in the environment.

I tried once before on Mac, but never could get it working properly. My impression of Nix on Mac is that it doesn't have exclusive control of your system, so it would be possible to install something outside of its control loop.

    I tried once before on Mac, but never could get it working properly.
What do you think about our native OSX installer?

Re: The Flox Open Beta

#37

Post by hatross »

bovermyer wrote: post #21

So it's kind of like machine configuration as code, with Nix doing the heavy lifting. That sounds interesting. However, I wonder how it deals with scenarios like using "flox pull" to do an initial setup, then manually installing something, then months later trying to reconcile what the code says should be installed and what's actually installed.

Which dependencies are you usually combining when you are developing?

I think you may really like flox, because flox will "lock in" the exact cryptographic hashes of the items you have installed and configured. So with flox, it becomes completely reproducible. Yet, you can still use the basic tools that you typically use to develop software (IDE, build tools, makefiles etc).

Re: The Flox Open Beta

#38

Post by jadyoyster »

stavros wrote: post #25
bovermyer wrote: post #21

So it's kind of like machine configuration as code, with Nix doing the heavy lifting. That sounds interesting. However, I wonder how it deals with scenarios like using "flox pull" to do an initial setup, then manually installing something, then months later trying to reconcile what the code says should be installed and what's actually installed.

Have you used Nix? As far as I know, you can't manually install something, at all. You need to add it to the Nix config for it to go in the environment.

You could make it look like manually installing but have it change the definition of the environment, like NPM does with package.json. It wouldn't be distinguishable for someone who doesn't care about Nix.

Re: The Flox Open Beta

#39

Post by thenipper »

rokgarbas wrote: post #34
thenipper wrote: post #22

This looks pretty interesting. I'm a lead software eng at a startup that is onboarding N number data analysts/engineers and on the face of it this seems like it'd be a great utility to help tame the craziness of python for them.

Thank you. Would you be willing to give us a challenge in a form of example environment that your data analysts/engineers would use with only a `flox pull`?

Sure thing. A big part of the workflow that we're developing depends on a variety of tools beyond just python packages. We've got things like dbt, prefect etc in the mix. Being able to specifically set up that set of tools for a project, as well as the right version of Python and sub dependencies like pip would be really helpful. A lot of these tools are easily installed with homebrew but then then issue is that they're global, and if you need version N for Project Y but Version N+1 for Project X then you're out of luck. Also as a sibling comment said i can use those some dependencies to build a container from.

I saw that you can layer environments when you activate, is it possible to have an env build on a another one/require another one? I'm thinking we'd have our standard company env which would have common utilities such as DBT or Gum installed but then we could easily layer over that with project specific dependencies.

Re: The Flox Open Beta

#40

Post by thenipper »

hatross wrote: post #32
thenipper wrote: post #22

This looks pretty interesting. I'm a lead software eng at a startup that is onboarding N number data analysts/engineers and on the face of it this seems like it'd be a great utility to help tame the craziness of python for them.

I think you are right. Plus it's a great way to integrate needed dependencies in other languages, and pin them to the exact version you need. When you need to deploy, you can actually use flox on the production machine, and "flox install", or you can load the flox package into a docker container image and deploy that way too. I developed a Django app for about 2 months with flox, which included postgresql,redis, and…

Oh interesting... yeah this is exactly what i'm looking to do, well Flask not Django but basically the same thing. Question, were you using pycharm at all? Did you have a good method on having that run a file from within a flox env?
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