The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded • Hacker News Board

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#201

Post by nocman » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

threethirtytwo wrote: post #185

forrestthewoods wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My gut feeling is that Nix is just not quite the right abstraction level. I can’t quite articulate this. And hell maybe I’m wrong. I don’t want to configure a global environment. I just want a build system that works reliably in any environment and can cross-compile from any platform to any platform. Nix does too damn much. All I want is a build system that doesn’t suck. And I want to run it on windows + Mac + Linux…

The truth is like the sun. The light from the sun touches everything, it's bright and it's obvious... yet no one can stare directly at it. It's like saying obese people are not attractive. It's just obviously true, but no one likes to talk about it and many people (who are obese or aren't) don't want to hear it. When you say this: "I don’t want to configure a global environment. I just want a build system that works…

> The truth is like the sun. The light from the sun touches everything, it's bright and it's obvious... yet no one can stare directly at it.

bad analogy. It can be very painful to accept the truth, but doing so is always a good thing. Staring directly into the sun can cause permanent damage to your eyes -- not a good thing.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#202

Post by JamesSwift » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #195

JamesSwift wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im thinking through this for my team, any previous writeups on it? Or do you mind brain dumping the high level of how you had it setup from a design perspective : D

This was a talk geared specifically at a ROS audience so it's lighter from a general infra point of view but there may still be something useful: https://vimeo.com/767139940 At the time of that talk we threw up a lightly sanitized version of the tooling on github. The basic idea was that there were these two repos: https://github.com/clearpathrobotics/nix-ros-base https://github.com/clearpathrobotics/nix-ros The firs…

Awesome, thanks for taking the time to put this together, that really is impressive pre-LLM. We wont be at this level for a while but its great to have resources to look at for examples of others have solved things.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#203

Post by yoyohello13 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:28 PM UTC

sunaookami wrote: post #173

yoyohello13 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really the furries that keep the modern world running.

Furries != Weeaboos/Otakus

Let’s me honest, the communities have a lot of overlap.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#204

Post by alberth » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

nextaccountic wrote: post #167

lrvick wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both statements are valid for StageX

How to define the list of installed packages in a config file in StageX, and tell the system that it should be the new list of packages? Like done in nixos If I remove a package from the list itt best uninstalled, if I add it gets installed, etc

Agreed, with NixOs - not only can you declare which packages to include, you can declare how those packages are setup.

Like setting up nginx as a package with SSL support for example.com domain, PHP working with nginx via PHP-FPM, etc.

StageX I don’t believe can do that. I believe it can only confirm that the nginx package hasn’t been tampered with.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#205

Post by Pay08 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #158

shevy-java wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Packages were handled way before 2025 already, so it is strange that you insinuate they'd all only burn out within a year, and before that it was all cake and tea. NixOS is dying, everyone sees this right now. > but we've also functioned without one for ~20 years. Then this is also a PR problem because why need a team when the 20 years before were allegedly so perfect?

> NixOS is dying, everyone sees this right now. Huh? Based on what? The packages I use keep getting updated, so clearly nixpkgs is alive. The OS I use keep getting updated, so clearly NixOS is alive to. Who exactly is dying, and what makes you believe that?

Isn't nixpkgs still a pretty bad state? I know there used to be a lot of "abandoned" packages that went years without updating to the new versions provided by upstream, that a lot of packages were copying binaries around instead of building open source software from the source, etc.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#206

Post by threethirtytwo » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

nocman wrote: post #201

threethirtytwo wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is like the sun. The light from the sun touches everything, it's bright and it's obvious... yet no one can stare directly at it. It's like saying obese people are not attractive. It's just obviously true, but no one likes to talk about it and many people (who are obese or aren't) don't want to hear it. When you say this: "I don’t want to configure a global environment. I just want a build system that works…

> The truth is like the sun. The light from the sun touches everything, it's bright and it's obvious... yet no one can stare directly at it. bad analogy. It can be very painful to accept the truth, but doing so is always a good thing. Staring directly into the sun can cause permanent damage to your eyes -- not a good thing.

No this is not true. There is an evolutionary reason why people lie to themselves. Look at the world.

Almost everyone believes in religions. The world lies to themselves on an unprecedented scale. If accepting the truth had an evolutionary benefit then most of the world would not be so delusional. Delusion dominates the population because lying to oneself conveys a survival benefit such that natural selection selects for this trait.

https://youtu.be/KCpxYa5N-OI?is=DahsnZ1_uCzh4Eq0

This short infographic illustrates and proves it. But you know what else proves it? Me getting voted down as I throw the truth down in front of everyone’s faces. I’m a target for selection.

Maybe nix will one day be a tool that’s actually good. It has elements of it but complexity and usability hinder adoption. So overall nix is just shit imo. It’s shit wrapped in a dream, a dream of an ideal way to do things. How do we make that dream a reality?

By lying to ourselves. By claiming nix is already there and that other people can’t see the light such that over the years after enough improvements nix becomes an actual good tool because enough delusional people pushed the dream far enough that it actually happened. But in order to do that… people like me must be culled from the herd.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#207

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:18 PM UTC

majorchord wrote: post #131

Aurornis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if the moderation team's collapse is indicative of anything. The first blog post complains about the Steering Committee for doing, well, steering . The moderators complaining that the Steering Committee is "interfering" points to a bigger issue where the moderation team didn't understand their role. The second blog post is from someone on the steering committee who complains about Gabriella439 (the autho…

I think the elephant in the room is that many tech nerds are just famously terrible at working with others and social skills in general, even if they have a long history of excellent work. Especially so if that experience was not gained from traditional careers where it wasn't possible to get by without people skills.

[deleted]

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#208

Post by iamnothere » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:23 PM UTC

Kratacoa wrote: post #177

fcantournet wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Always important to remember that the equity-left is only about 20% of Americans, and the US is the global stronghold for such ideals What ? The U.S main ideological exports of the last 50 years are neoliberalism, alt-right and techno-feudalism. Its 2 party would register as far right and center right in basically any other country.

Both sentences are false. > The U.S main ideological exports of the last 50 years are neoliberalism, alt-right and techno-feudalism U.S.A is responsible for the pervasiveness of social liberalism in the centre-left of Western countries, and more specifically the topics of its American version (the so called "wokeness"). It's distinct from neoliberalism, although academic left, and its pundits, like to use that misnom…

I agree with you. If you look at its biggest sponsors, it’s apparent that social liberalism is an attempt to shore up the position of neoliberal capitalism by redirecting ire away from capital and corporations. By elevating the individual above all else, and promoting identity groups secondly, it also implicitly directs people away from class-based politics (which is furthermore framed as a form of supremacy/oppression). Finally, the lowest classes in the West are divided evenly between whites and oppressed minorities, so keeping them at odds prevents intra-class cooperation.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#209

Post by Pay08 » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #136

aliasxneo wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, but it's another domino in a broader trend that appears to have a common root. It was only a year ago that the moderation team mass resigned pointing the finger at the steering committee [1]. It's not been the same people for the last two years, but clearly there must be systemic issues in the people getting elected to this board for there to be so many persistent problems. Also see roberth's resignation [2]…

> but clearly there must be systemic issues in the people getting elected to this board for there to be so many persistent problems. First time dealing with a committee? It is routine for every community to be shrouded in an ongoing cloud of drama and that doesn't indicate anything at all. There certainly could be problems and if there are it'll generate chatter, but the problems have to be dealt with individually. P…

Drama certainly doesn't seem to be a problem for GNU.

Re: The Nixpkgs core team has disbanded

#210

Post by lrvick » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #132

lrvick wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can define an immutable, deterministic, and bootable system image for anything from an enclave to a laptop with just the primitives provided by the OCI Containerfile standard. A stagex containerfile can define a system build recipe in such a way that several competing build systems that obey the same standard can all get the same hashes, which we sign every release.

What is the stagex story for managing a "normal" laptop? Is there a tool that converts an OCI image to a ... rootfs partition? Or such?

there are several distros built using stagex to get a disk image like airgapos. Just a containerfile a user writes at the last mile.

But when my current "distros" branch lands ideally this month, we will have in-tree support for building images for many common desktop, server, enclave, and embedded use cases.