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Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager

brioche.dev

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Re: Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager

#41

Post by Rucadi »

tombert wrote: post #2

Flakes definitely help with the giant megarepo annoyances of NixOS, though they're still a little irritating. If you are writing in a languages that doesn't hasn't had its packages directly integrated into the build system (like Python's has), it can be really irritating to do anything with them, since the `nix build` command disables network access and you therefore cannot use regular package manager. I'm doing a pr…

If you mark a derivation as impure with __impure=true; and activate "ca-derivations flakes nix-command" as experimental features, you can access the internet.

I agree sometimes is a pain tho.

But most of the time, If you need internet access, if you can specify the "hash" of the result file, anything that you do to achieve that file can have internet access.

Re: Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager

#42

Post by raffraffraff »

Reading the comments makes me think I'm turning into my dad. He was a simple man in terms of education and career. He was a fire man on a stream train in 1950, a farmer, barman, handyman. Out in the sticks, he was everyone's go-to guy when a vet couldn't be found, because he kept a "livestock first aid kit" including penicillin & syringes. He talked to vets and read books and knew about the most common ailments and how to treat them. He serviced his own car and tractor, including stripping the tractor engine down in his yard without proper tools, and getting cylinders bored and pistons sleeved, and putting it back together. He ran electric cable in farm building and sheds (after chatting to an electrician) and he did a ton of building work around the house. But at a certain age, maybe around 50, all new technology was out. Electricity was fine but electronics were out. Mechanical problems were fine because you could look straight at a thing and figure out how it clicked together, but once it had a microcontroller and a panel that abstracted away the actual working of the machine it just became some weird arbitrary "thing" that blocked his view of the machine. I'm sure if he was in his 20s when this stuff appeared he'd be all over it, but he was born in 1926, so I think the mighty micro was too late for him. He flatly refused to use the VCR, alarm systems, any type of computer. Show him a rubis cube, he's interested. Show him a microwave oven with more than 5 buttons and he'll make a sandwich instead.

This is me with nix. I'm ok with all the stuff that's emerged in my field (infra/sysadmin) since the 90s. But nix makes me instantly glaze over. Several times I tried, but it's like my brain unplugs itself. I'm sure it does some wonderful stuff at an extremely high price that I'm not willing to pay.

Nix has a huge mindshare, which I don't think you can win back if Nix keeps fixing the core issues mentored in these comments. Best of luck with this, though.

Re: Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager

#43

Post by fire_lake »

kylewlacy wrote: post #6
tombert wrote: post #2

Flakes definitely help with the giant megarepo annoyances of NixOS, though they're still a little irritating. If you are writing in a languages that doesn't hasn't had its packages directly integrated into the build system (like Python's has), it can be really irritating to do anything with them, since the `nix build` command disables network access and you therefore cannot use regular package manager. I'm doing a pr…

This was one of my bigger pain points with Nix as well: there was a lot of "reinventing the world" just to avoid network access. With Brioche, I stuck with disabling network access by default, but there's an escape hatch to specifically opt-in to networking (by calling `.unsafe({ networking: true })` on a process recipe). My thoughts are that Cargo, NPM, Poetry, etc. have all done a great job building amazing tooling…

> have all done a great job building amazing tooling to download and verify resources from the network against a lockfile

This is a bad assumption

Re: Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager

#44

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

raffraffraff wrote: post #42

Reading the comments makes me think I'm turning into my dad. He was a simple man in terms of education and career. He was a fire man on a stream train in 1950, a farmer, barman, handyman. Out in the sticks, he was everyone's go-to guy when a vet couldn't be found, because he kept a "livestock first aid kit" including penicillin & syringes. He talked to vets and read books and knew about the most common ailments and h…

Nix solves the same problem we used to solve back in the day (before Docker taught us to run everything as root and disable firewalls, #yolo) ad-hoc with random poorly maintained scripts.

If you never had to solve this problem then it probably isn't for you. If you did, then being able to finally replace the old contraptions with something properly engineered is a breath of fresh air.

Re: Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager

#45

Post by IshKebab »

fire_lake wrote: post #43
kylewlacy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was one of my bigger pain points with Nix as well: there was a lot of "reinventing the world" just to avoid network access. With Brioche, I stuck with disabling network access by default, but there's an escape hatch to specifically opt-in to networking (by calling `.unsafe({ networking: true })` on a process recipe). My thoughts are that Cargo, NPM, Poetry, etc. have all done a great job building amazing tooling…

> have all done a great job building amazing tooling to download and verify resources from the network against a lockfile This is a bad assumption

Why? Are you referring to the fact that it's opt-in; you have to use `cargo build --locked` or `npm ci`?

Re: Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager

#46

Post by Dalewyn »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #44
raffraffraff wrote: post #42

Reading the comments makes me think I'm turning into my dad. He was a simple man in terms of education and career. He was a fire man on a stream train in 1950, a farmer, barman, handyman. Out in the sticks, he was everyone's go-to guy when a vet couldn't be found, because he kept a "livestock first aid kit" including penicillin & syringes. He talked to vets and read books and knew about the most common ailments and h…

Nix solves the same problem we used to solve back in the day (before Docker taught us to run everything as root and disable firewalls, #yolo) ad-hoc with random poorly maintained scripts. If you never had to solve this problem then it probably isn't for you. If you did, then being able to finally replace the old contraptions with something properly engineered is a breath of fresh air.

>before Docker taught us to run everything as root

Windows called, it wants its Administrators back.

Re: Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager

#48

Post by bayindirh »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #44
raffraffraff wrote: post #42

Reading the comments makes me think I'm turning into my dad. He was a simple man in terms of education and career. He was a fire man on a stream train in 1950, a farmer, barman, handyman. Out in the sticks, he was everyone's go-to guy when a vet couldn't be found, because he kept a "livestock first aid kit" including penicillin & syringes. He talked to vets and read books and knew about the most common ailments and h…

Nix solves the same problem we used to solve back in the day (before Docker taught us to run everything as root and disable firewalls, #yolo) ad-hoc with random poorly maintained scripts. If you never had to solve this problem then it probably isn't for you. If you did, then being able to finally replace the old contraptions with something properly engineered is a breath of fresh air.

The thing is, old ways didn't have to be contraptions at all. If we had to run many services on a system, we instead ran BSD with jails, or if we have to run Linux, with chroots.

These solutions, abstracted the convoluted solutions away. Who didn't want to form these solutions themselves (which is fair, because it needs intricate knowledge about close-to-OS stuff) built "contraptions" instead.

The core solutions to core problems didn't change at all. We sometimes use the more modern approaches, because we feel lazy sometimes.

Re: Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager

#49

Post by bayindirh »

Dalewyn wrote: post #46
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nix solves the same problem we used to solve back in the day (before Docker taught us to run everything as root and disable firewalls, #yolo) ad-hoc with random poorly maintained scripts. If you never had to solve this problem then it probably isn't for you. If you did, then being able to finally replace the old contraptions with something properly engineered is a breath of fresh air.

>before Docker taught us to run everything as root Windows called, it wants its Administrators back.

Windows guys still have these, right?

Re: Show HN: Brioche – A new Nix-like package manager

#50

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

bayindirh wrote: post #48
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nix solves the same problem we used to solve back in the day (before Docker taught us to run everything as root and disable firewalls, #yolo) ad-hoc with random poorly maintained scripts. If you never had to solve this problem then it probably isn't for you. If you did, then being able to finally replace the old contraptions with something properly engineered is a breath of fresh air.

The thing is, old ways didn't have to be contraptions at all. If we had to run many services on a system, we instead ran BSD with jails, or if we have to run Linux, with chroots. These solutions, abstracted the convoluted solutions away. Who didn't want to form these solutions themselves (which is fair, because it needs intricate knowledge about close-to-OS stuff) built "contraptions" instead. The core solutions to c…

At some point you will want to manage your own software supply chain. A C++ compiler is the bare minimum, but then you'll surely want a Python environment too, and of course some npm packages for the frontend. Then you'll want some cross-compilation - for the new ARM processors, or maybe you want a different libc. After that you need caching and remote builds, because build times are a pain in the ass.

Here you come to realize that Nix already comes with all that out of the box, with some minimal tweaking.

Jails/chroots/containers are an orthogonal thing, though often whatever comes out of your software supply chain you'd want to run containerized too.

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