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Will Nix Overtake Docker?

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Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#51

Post by aspaceman »

taeric wrote: post #31
exdsq wrote: post #29

Oh god I hope not. Having worked in > 100kloc nix environments I am completely turned off of the idea. I really really tried, I installed NixOS as my main OS and used Nix whenever I could to try and pick it up, but it's such a complex beast I felt it slowed everything down. Simple tasks that would take 10 minutes in Docker suddenly became DevOps tickets. I suddenly had to write bindings for tools rather than apt-get…

Funny, because I feel that simple tasks that would take minutes in my machine are now a dev adventure with docker. And I mean funny. I suspect it is different mindsets. And I personally like that both seem to be thriving.

I feel similarly with Docker. But it's easier to explain to newer folks because it's only a single layer of abstraction above shell commands.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#52

Post by rgoulter »

lvass wrote: post #33
exdsq wrote: post #29

Oh god I hope not. Having worked in > 100kloc nix environments I am completely turned off of the idea. I really really tried, I installed NixOS as my main OS and used Nix whenever I could to try and pick it up, but it's such a complex beast I felt it slowed everything down. Simple tasks that would take 10 minutes in Docker suddenly became DevOps tickets. I suddenly had to write bindings for tools rather than apt-get…

I've always kept my usage of Nix language to a minimum and found it to be a joy every time. But it's no wonder you'd have trouble on something that humongous. Why did it get so large?

> I've always kept my usage of Nix language to a minimum and found it to be a joy every time.

The trouble is, it's more significant to consider what the pain is in the worst case.

e.g. Two things which count against Nix: With stuff like Docker, I can get away with not really understanding what's going on, and have a quick + dirty fix. And with Nix, the community is smaller, so it's less likely you'll find an answer to the problem you're having right now.

I worked at a company where the DevOps team used Nix for the production/staging. For local development (and ephemeral development deployments), the dev team came up with a docker-compose setup. -- That said, there was at least one case where the devs contributed to the Nix stuff by way of copy-pasting to setup a new deployment.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#53

Post by Hendrikto »

zamadatix wrote: post #27

Somewhat not related and likely dumb question but I figure folks looking at this article can help steer me in the right direction: if I want containers to act like Linux VMs what's the best option? Like Docker minus the assumption that I only want a few specific directories to persist or the idea I'm interested in layering containers in a way that lets me reproduce building them. Like if I just want another separate…

That’s basically what systemd-nspawn does.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#54

Post by justicezyx »

> This question could be dismissed by saying that Nix and Docker are different tools that solve different problems.

> One is a container deployment toolkit and the other is a package and configuration manager.

My reading, based on the mapping from the arrangement of the 2 words Nix and Docker, is that Nix is a "container deployment toolkit" and docker "package and configuration manager".

Of course, this interpretation is wrong.

Further, even if applying container deployment toolkit as a description to docker, it still misses a core part of docker, I.e., docker is also a container image building tool kit. The building part and the deployment are for different steps with seemingly equal importance.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#55

Post by Gigachad »

jonstewart wrote: post #17
Gigachad wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of a tangent, but from what I have seen, crontab doesn't actually exist on modern distros, I believe they have a tool that converts the crontab config in to systemd timers. As well as fstab.

Yes, so I was doubly frustrated in this instance. I know the BSD-style init script system that I learned with Slackware is not geared well towards modern hardware (i.e., laptops), but it was so much simpler to read and comprehend.

Systemd timers do have several advantages but they come with more complexity which is why a translation layer is usually applied on user focused distros.

You can enable/disable timers, trigger them manually, see when they last triggered, see when they will next trigger. And probably a bunch of other stuff. They also have individual files so automation can easily add or remove timers. For a power user, systemd timers are much better. But if you just want to quickly add one thing, it probably isn’t worth the effort to learn

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#56

Post by cglong »

Does Nix have an answer to Docker's support for Windows containers? The ability to mix legacy Windows applications with cloud-native ones is a huge boon for those interested in migrating to a modern stack.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#57

Post by paxys »

The article starts and ends with "they are very different tools for different use cases". What was even the point of writing the whole thing hypothesizing whether one will replace the other?

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#58

Post by r3trohack3r »

I know the author calls this out - but Docker and Nix _are_ different.

For immutable distribution they solve the same problem. But they solve it in fundamentally different ways.

If you go back and read the last 20 years or so of LISA papers, it can be … humbling/frustrating. You can read two papers back to back, separated by 15 years, and they’ll be describing a new solution to the same exact problem that still hasn’t been properly solved. Dependency management has been horribly broken in our industry and we’ve never really managed to address it - until Nix. The Nix LISA paper [1] was a breath of fresh air, it really cut to the core of the problems with modern dependency management and addressed them head on.

Docker declared bankruptcy on dependency management and just resorted to fs snapshots to guarantee bit perfect deployments.

[1] https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/nspfssd-lisa2004-final.pdf

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#59

Post by rgoulter »

dimgl wrote: post #48

As someone who has never used Nix, from first glance the question I ask myself is... why?

Nix is difficult, but there are advantages to it.

A couple of comparisons are similar: with Terraform (or CloudFormation etc.), you put in a lot of effort up front in order to reduce maintenance effort later. You could manually go through and setup a VM instance or two; but with Terraform, you have a declaration in code of what the system should be.

I think another comparison is: Vim or Emacs are more difficult to use compared to using VSCode. In terms of DX, there are advantages to Emacs over VSCode. If modal editing seems to make sense, it's probably worth looking at vim. But, if you just want to get the job done right now and not fuss about learning an unfamiliar tool, VSCode is surely a better choice.

Re: Will Nix Overtake Docker?

#60

Post by Barrin92 »

exdsq wrote: post #29

Oh god I hope not. Having worked in > 100kloc nix environments I am completely turned off of the idea. I really really tried, I installed NixOS as my main OS and used Nix whenever I could to try and pick it up, but it's such a complex beast I felt it slowed everything down. Simple tasks that would take 10 minutes in Docker suddenly became DevOps tickets. I suddenly had to write bindings for tools rather than apt-get…

>Build times in Haskell were bad enough

this one's very true. Every time I try to build something in Haskell on my laptop it feels like we're moving closer to the heat death of the universe. Is there some good read on how/why Haskell compilation times are so long compared to some other languages?

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