261–270 of 323 posts
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Generally something like languages.javascript.enable = true languages.javascript.package = pkgs.nodejs_24
But that doesn’t pin to a specific version?
Although I’ve never committed to using nix system-wide, I do enjoy nix-based using https://devenv.sh/ for the very reasons described in the article. It’s much easier than local containers for development.
Can you help me understand why devenv is needed instead of a shell like this/what is gained? { pkgs }: pkgs.mkShell { nativeBuildInputs = with pkgs; [ # build tools cmake ninja gnumake pkg-config ]; buildInputs = with pkgs; [ # java jdk8 # compilers gcc clang llvmPackages.libcxx # libraries capstone icu openssl_3 libusb1 libftdi zlib # scripting (python3.withPackages (ps: with ps; [ requests pyelftools ])) ]; # capst…
Most people who try Nix either quit in the first week or never go back to anything else. There is no in between.
I'd much prefer just Plan 9. WORM filesystem and first-class namespaces.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally something like languages.javascript.enable = true languages.javascript.package = pkgs.nodejs_24
But that doesn’t pin to a specific version?
~/repos/nixpkgs$ git log --grep='nodejs.* 24.14.0' -1 origin/master
commit 9c0e2056b3c16190aafe67e4d29e530fc1f8c7c7
Merge: d3a4e93b79c9 0873aea2d0da
Date: Tue Feb 24 16:53:40 2026 +0000
nodejs_24: 24.13.1 -> 24.14.0 (#493691)
~/repos/nixpkgs$ nix eval nixpkgs/9c0e2056b3c16190aafe67e4d29e530fc1f8c7c7#nodejs_24.version
"24.14.0"
~/repos/nixpkgs$Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Something that happens in 4.5k lines twice is hardly rare. Provided you don't consider the context, sure. One of them is software with buggy tests, the other is one that provides a custom test suite that basically has to be reimplemented in the package definition. How often do you think either of those things happen?
Looking at a lot of nix package expression: Quite a bit. Besides, just taking a way a single brace gives 7 hits. Still a ridiculous level of nesting. So I don't go with your reasoning that these are some kind of super special cases. If something happens so often in 4500 lines of code you cease the right to claim it is special.
You are projecting a programming style onto Lisps that's quite alien to them. Lisps tend towards small, discrete functions that are composed together. It is the ordinary languages that tend towards deep branching and nesting; Lisps generally favour recursion and function composition instead.
The author almost touches on the one more topic that I adore about Nix, but ends up just so missing it: NixOS is absolutely incredible for its ability to be configured through AI tooling. And I don't mean that it's better than other operating systems, I mean that it's the only game in town. I've been using Nix, both the package manager and the operating system, for years by now. I agree with all of the author's point…
Coding agents actually help with a lot of the ergonomic issues. If you have an evaluation issue, it can be annoying to climb into nixpkgs to diagnose it. But codex will do that for you.
I’ve found agenix in particular to be really great addition for agents: secrets you can copy around without risk of accidental disclosure.
In a day I can now deploy Caddy, Authentik, Fleet, Headscale, Stalwart, jmap-webmail, Forgejo, SFTPGo, Immich, Grafana, Jaeger, PostHog, etc. and have them all work together. I can do this on a tiny VPS, and codex can actually estimate and test performance to minimize cost.
The equivalent Kubernetes setup wastes so much on isolation and a scheduler that is overkill for anything small.
NixOS is great. Nix the language is just awful. I still use it for my Dev laptop and for Home Manager on all my devices.
People just seem to want to complain because it doesn't look like any of their favorite languages and they aren't familiar with functional languages. At this point, I can't imagine using any other language in place of Nix. The code would have so much noise and be much harder to read.
However, AI is a great fit to write flakes. You can easily understand the generated code and it gives a power to "review" the changes before applying them.
And while nixos is amazing, I think nixpkgs are a bit overhyped; I've encountered many packages that are abandoned and outdated.
I can share my configs if anyone is interested.
doesn't it use up a lot of disk space compared to other distros because of the way everything is set up?
I had issues when giving boot partition only 512mb, so I'd recommend going with 1G.
What I'd like to see is Omarchy implemented via the Nix package manager. (Seems like a good project for AI, actually.)
My entire config is almost "omarchy", at least visually with hyprland and some other packages.