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Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

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Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#51

Post by tomberek »

notresidenter wrote: post #21
mkenigs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flox employee here! To start off by addressing how this relates to nix tools: - Our goal is to be more user friendly. You don't have to learn the Nix expression language or understand nix internals to be successful. - We've been able to add some opinionation and polish. Some of that is subjective, but some examples are: - We have a hybrid imperative/declarative interface. You can `flox install && flox list`, and thos…

You know you can just write `nix develop -c zsh` or `nix develop -c fish` or whatever, right?

Yes, I'm also a Nix maintainer. `nix develop` does many other things, originally based on re-creating the build environment of a derivation. This means that it is not ideal for the case of development environments that must support more than just building.

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#52

Post by colordrops »

solatic wrote: post #35

One critical issue with "power of Nix without the learning curve" kind of products is that you still have Nix behind the scenes, including the /nix/store, which is intentionally not cleaned up by Nix automatically. So when users try out something that hides Nix from them, their drives inevitably fill up, which is super user-friendly because they have no idea how to reduce the amount of storage used. It's different wh…

Nix supports garbage collection.

Also there are literally thousands of insanely complex things happening behind the scenes every time you use your computer. Not sure why Nix is considered special when abstracting over it.

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#53

Post by dieortin »

emptysea wrote: post #47
solatic wrote: post #35

One critical issue with "power of Nix without the learning curve" kind of products is that you still have Nix behind the scenes, including the /nix/store, which is intentionally not cleaned up by Nix automatically. So when users try out something that hides Nix from them, their drives inevitably fill up, which is super user-friendly because they have no idea how to reduce the amount of storage used. It's different wh…

We have the same problem with bazel at work, after a few months your machine is running out of disk space

Luckily a feature to limit the disk cache size is in development: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazel/issues/5139

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#54

Post by eikenberry »

the_duke wrote: post #43
mkenigs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flox employee here! To start off by addressing how this relates to nix tools: - Our goal is to be more user friendly. You don't have to learn the Nix expression language or understand nix internals to be successful. - We've been able to add some opinionation and polish. Some of that is subjective, but some examples are: - We have a hybrid imperative/declarative interface. You can `flox install && flox list`, and thos…

So what you are offering here is essentially a small UX improvement over sharing a flake with a devshell in a Git repo? I'm the first to admit that nix is way too cumbersome to use, but this alone doesn't seem like enough value add.

The value needed by Nix is not more/better tech but an on-ramp for people who want to use Nix without learning all about all the various ways to do thing. Just having a single, opinionated onboarding experience will add a ton of value to the project.

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#55

Post by joshcsimmons »

the_duke wrote: post #43
mkenigs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flox employee here! To start off by addressing how this relates to nix tools: - Our goal is to be more user friendly. You don't have to learn the Nix expression language or understand nix internals to be successful. - We've been able to add some opinionation and polish. Some of that is subjective, but some examples are: - We have a hybrid imperative/declarative interface. You can `flox install && flox list`, and thos…

So what you are offering here is essentially a small UX improvement over sharing a flake with a devshell in a Git repo? I'm the first to admit that nix is way too cumbersome to use, but this alone doesn't seem like enough value add.

If you think this is a "small" improvement on Nix's UX you clearly have never used Nix.

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#56

Post by joshcsimmons »

shubber wrote: post #12
ivanjermakov wrote: post #3

What is the benefit of using Flox over plain nix-shell or nix develop?

Put another way, I would think that individual engineers would be better off learning the underlying tech and the tools provided that go with them. I think it's very possible that Flox (or devenv or...) reaches EOL, or ceases to track nixpkgs appropriately, or any of the other ways that software rots. Where nix develop is going to last as long as Nix Flakes do, and there's incentive to provide a migration path to wha…

Does a python developer NEED to know how C works to write automation scripts that work reasonably well? This logic is silly.

Re: Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix

#60

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

solatic wrote: post #35

One critical issue with "power of Nix without the learning curve" kind of products is that you still have Nix behind the scenes, including the /nix/store, which is intentionally not cleaned up by Nix automatically. So when users try out something that hides Nix from them, their drives inevitably fill up, which is super user-friendly because they have no idea how to reduce the amount of storage used. It's different wh…

As opposed to Docker, or Bazel?

Conversely I have never had this problem with Nix. It tells you plainly how to clean up garbage. It's easy to interrogate to find out what's hanging around, and why. The reason it's not on by default is that, like any garbage collector, it can be disruptive -- there is no "one size fits all" policy.

Ultimately if you have too many gc roots you have to make some decisions.

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