Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics

#1

Post by droelf » Fri, Oct 24, 2025, 3:36 PM UTC

Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics
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Re: Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics

#2

Post by dima55 » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 12:23 AM UTC

This is the ROS way: add more layers of crap on it until it sorta kinda works sometimes. If you want "reproducible package management", use Debian. ROS1 is already in stock Debian. Some of ROS2 is as well. If you actually want ros to suck less, please package the reset of ROS2, and push it to Debian.

Re: Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics

#3

Post by tamimio » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 12:29 AM UTC

dima55 wrote: post #2

This is the ROS way: add more layers of crap on it until it sorta kinda works sometimes. If you want "reproducible package management", use Debian. ROS1 is already in stock Debian. Some of ROS2 is as well. If you actually want ros to suck less, please package the reset of ROS2, and push it to Debian.

Pretty much yeah, I remember I did some work with ROS2 after 1, and since then I always prefer to build from scratch, cleaner, simpler, and in many cases far better results too.

Re: Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics

#4

Post by forgetbook » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 2:32 AM UTC

tamimio wrote: post #3

dima55 wrote: post #2

This is the ROS way: add more layers of crap on it until it sorta kinda works sometimes. If you want "reproducible package management", use Debian. ROS1 is already in stock Debian. Some of ROS2 is as well. If you actually want ros to suck less, please package the reset of ROS2, and push it to Debian.

Pretty much yeah, I remember I did some work with ROS2 after 1, and since then I always prefer to build from scratch, cleaner, simpler, and in many cases far better results too.

Any thoughts on Nix for this?

Re: Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics

#5

Post by dima55 » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 2:38 AM UTC

forgetbook wrote: post #4

tamimio wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much yeah, I remember I did some work with ROS2 after 1, and since then I always prefer to build from scratch, cleaner, simpler, and in many cases far better results too.

Any thoughts on Nix for this?

The packaging is only one of ROS's numerous issues. Just do it yourself.

Re: Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics

#6

Post by a_t48 » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 2:42 AM UTC

Slightly interested if this makes it easier to install ROS on not-Ubuntu, or on "unsupported" Ubuntu versions, but I don't really want to be the one owning the infra behind running the source builds for ROS2, from my experience so far they're kind of slow. Side by side ROS1/2 for migration is kind of interesting, too.

Re: Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics

#7

Post by breakds » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 3:03 AM UTC

forgetbook wrote: post #4

tamimio wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much yeah, I remember I did some work with ROS2 after 1, and since then I always prefer to build from scratch, cleaner, simpler, and in many cases far better results too.

Any thoughts on Nix for this?

https://github.com/lopsided98/nix-ros-overlay

Re: Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics

#8

Post by resters » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 3:44 AM UTC

is there by any chance a robot simulator for various kinds of robots so those who don't actually have hardware can explore software aspects?

Re: Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics

#9

Post by ivaniscoding » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 4:33 AM UTC

I think people have been sleeping on Pixi. There has been a lot of hype about uv lately and lots of the praise apply to Pixi as well!

Pixi shines in those niches where Conda was the only option. It seems ROS is one of them.

I have been using Pixi with emscripten-forge to create Python WASM distributions. It’s another niche with a lack of tooling. Pixi is the only tool that streamlined my build process.

Keep up with the good work!

Re: Pixi: Reproducible Package Management for Robotics

#10

Post by robotresearcher » Tue, Nov 04, 2025, 5:06 AM UTC

resters wrote: post #8

is there by any chance a robot simulator for various kinds of robots so those who don't actually have hardware can explore software aspects?

Yep. The most popular sim well integrated with ROS is Gazebo, a full 3D sim. Very powerful. There’s also the much simpler Stage, limited to 2.5D mobile robots.