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The main issue I had while using NixOS is that it has a small and somewhat broken set of packages. This is compounded by the very incomplete Nix documentation - its way too hard to create new packages.
Perhaps it is hard to discover how to, but I was about to post here and say one of the best things about nix is how easy it is to hack and add packages. It does require a bit of learning about how it works, but once you do the whole system is quite understandable. It's also very easy to test out things locally, overriding and extending the nix package collection. It is fairly straightforward to set up, build and install your own local projects as nix packages. Even I -- a mere web developer, who mostly uses OS X -- got a package definition merged into the main repository, it was that simple.
One series of blog posts that is good in this regard is the Nix pill series: http://lethalman.blogspot.com/2014/07/nix-pill-1-why-you-sho...
Thanks to the core devs who made this possible.
Oh nice. Very impressive.
If you found out through gdb that your code compiled with -O0 was still somehow optimized by gcc, or if you found out that your gcc did not optimize your code aggressively enough although you gave it -Ofast, check out this issue [0]. [0] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/18995 Yeah. The devs believed it was okay to make gcc -O2 by default and impossible to override from the command line you gave to gcc. If you…
The main issue I had while using NixOS is that it has a small and somewhat broken set of packages. This is compounded by the very incomplete Nix documentation - its way too hard to create new packages.
I agree the documentation needs work. It can be a real exercise in institutional knowledge sometimes to piece things together. I'd love to help you package something new, or fix an existing package if you would like. The thing that kept me going is how easy it was to fix ... after learning the incantations. I think the project as a whole would welcome suggestions on where to improve docs as well, and would _definitel…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree the documentation needs work. It can be a real exercise in institutional knowledge sometimes to piece things together. I'd love to help you package something new, or fix an existing package if you would like. The thing that kept me going is how easy it was to fix ... after learning the incantations. I think the project as a whole would welcome suggestions on where to improve docs as well, and would _definitel…
I don't use NixOS, but would raising documentation bugs the same way you raise bugs against code help?
If you found out through gdb that your code compiled with -O0 was still somehow optimized by gcc, or if you found out that your gcc did not optimize your code aggressively enough although you gave it -Ofast, check out this issue [0]. [0] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/18995 Yeah. The devs believed it was okay to make gcc -O2 by default and impossible to override from the command line you gave to gcc. If you…
I still love NixOS! A little hiccup here and there but it's still a great idea that I am happy to support.
I use NixOS for my personal development and on professional projects that are live on NixOS right now. AMA