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The future of software is Nix

determinate.systems

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Re: The future of software is Nix

#41

Post by rossng »

andrewla wrote: post #12

The future of software is Nix in the same sense that the future of software was Bitkeeper. It was readily apparent to anyone using Bitkeeper that this was the right way for version control software to work. Similarly, the Nix model is clearly correct. But just as Bitkeeper was a clumsy early attempt at implementing that paradigm, so is Nix. The article says that "Nix is declarative" which could not be further from th…

It feels like there might still be time for Nix to morph into something that can get mass adoption. But it probably requires some radical technical changes and the controversy around flakes (which are incredibly useful) suggests that the existing community might not accept that.

Whatever comes next, IMO the killer feature will be that it enables rock solid developer tooling. LSPs that work; typed inputs to modules; control of deployment of NixOS machines and so on.

Re: The future of software is Nix

#43

Post by Macha »

dpatterbee wrote: post #38
nalzok wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Nix is the right idea, but I'm hesitant to adopt it right now because (i) rough edges like poor documentation and inconsistent interfaces make it feel immature, (ii) things are moving very fast with experimental stuff like flakes, which means it will take a while before Nix starts to stabilize, and (iii) recent community forks like Lix might create a fragmented ecosystem in the long run. What are your th…

As a response to (ii), I assure you that things are most certainly not moving very fast with experimental stuff like flakes. Flakes were first released as "experimental" almost 3 years ago and have been stuck in feature purgatory ever since.

To be blunt, this is driven by the rejection of flakes by a significant group of the contributor base, despite it being much more adopted by the user base at large.

Even as someone who does think Flakes are better than the prior solutions, I'm increasingly of the opinion that Flakes would be better moved to a layer outside the core Nix project - advancing them within core Nix at this stage seems pretty impossible with many within the project opposed to their existence. I think if Flakes were an alternative project at the same level as something like Niv, a lot of the holy warring would get out of the way.

1. Those who wish to improve them could do so without the discussion being deadlocked by "hey, we haven't yet agreed these should be stable"

2. Those who don't want to paint them as the path forward for fear of precluding a better option, now don't have to.

Re: The future of software is Nix

#44

Post by Spivak »

rfoo wrote: post #37
andrewla wrote: post #12

The future of software is Nix in the same sense that the future of software was Bitkeeper. It was readily apparent to anyone using Bitkeeper that this was the right way for version control software to work. Similarly, the Nix model is clearly correct. But just as Bitkeeper was a clumsy early attempt at implementing that paradigm, so is Nix. The article says that "Nix is declarative" which could not be further from th…

> Kill the language and replace it with configuration No. Hard no. Please don't tell me you are going to kill a fine (even though awkward) configuration language and replace it with (potentially text-templated) yaml.

I think I would rather replace it with a spec for derivation files implementable in any language that existing build systems can hook into and use as outputs.

    make derivation
    python -m build derivation
Trying to package software with dependencies that don't exist in nixpkgs is painful despite the tooling existing to build and install them.

Re: The future of software is Nix

#45

Post by stackskipton »

steveklabnik wrote: post #9
grhmc wrote: post #2

Hey folks CEO of Determinate Systems, and the author of the blog post. I'd be glad to answer questions about the post and what we're doing!

I am a Windows user. The default nix implementation does not support Windows. How can the future of software leave out one of the largest platforms on the planet?

Because the future of software isn't on Windows. Even Microsoft realizes that with MSSQL moving to Linux (and dying), .Net recommended on Linux and internally, vast majority of workloads that can run on Linux are doing so. Apparently, a ton of Office Teams architecture is Linux.

Re: The future of software is Nix

#47

Post by sleepydog »

rgreekguy wrote: post #35

Something I have never understood is why the hard-on with Nix, and Guix is not heard of even a tenth of the times. Is GPL really so repulsive to the masses? Or the libre kernel default?

I think guix was just late to the party and the extra steps to setup the nonguix for the non free software like steam is enough of a deterrent for users to go to nix instead.

I use guix myself and prefer its use of scheme. I don't mind having a little less guidance and "how-to" articles available if I'm trying something new because I'm comfortable reading its codebase.

Re: The future of software is Nix

#48

Post by jonringer117 »

steveklabnik wrote: post #9
grhmc wrote: post #2

Hey folks CEO of Determinate Systems, and the author of the blog post. I'd be glad to answer questions about the post and what we're doing!

I am a Windows user. The default nix implementation does not support Windows. How can the future of software leave out one of the largest platforms on the planet?

(Thanks for all your work on rust)

There is some work to get nix to work with Windows, this is mostly being done by john ericson.

However, the real issue is that nixpkgs (the repository containing all nix expressions) heavily assume unix paradigms.

There could be a "nix-windows repository" in the medium to far future, but it will likely be very divergent from the current nix+nixpkgs story of today.

Re: The future of software is Nix

#49

Post by stackskipton »

We have Nixstan on "Ops Team" who keeps pushing us to use it. We haven't seen need that much.

So can someone give me elevator pitch that if we are CRUD Web App, why Nix instead of Puppet/Ansible + Docker Containers?

Also, this from the blog article: "What if adopting Nix didn’t irritate your IT or security teams?" Too late, security team is already pissed. They did some scan, we pinned a package, it has 3 high severity and it needs to be updated tomorrow. So yea, we are just yoloing package updates, we don't have much of a choice.

Oh yea, we have some third party proprietary package we use. Support told us, Red Hat/Rocky/Ubuntu or we could kiss support goodbye. Any suggestions that doesn't involve shoehorning nix into Ubuntu which is like mud wrestling with a pig?

Re: The future of software is Nix

#50

Post by andrewla »

croes wrote: post #5

Nix is the future gets another meaning if you know that nix in German means nothing.

Similarly in English. I think "nix", like "git", is a self-deprecating name. It's a play on both "nix" -- to cancel or to not exist, and "nix" as the suffix for Li- and U-.
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