• borosilicate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    17 hours ago

    People around here love to do anything in their power to achieve the exact properties of using Nix using ANYTHING other than Nix.

    • TehPers@beehaw.org
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      7 hours ago

      Mirroring the other comment, but this post really has nothing to do with Nix, so I have no clue where this comment came from.


      But anyway, I think Nix has a few things that turn people away:

      • New language to learn (which is fairly simple, but gets more complicated when you introduce…)
      • Nix flakes? nix-shell? nix-env? Just looking at setting up a shell, you have nix-shell, nix shell, nix develop, and possibly so many others
      • The module system, put lightly, is confusing (for when you need modules)
      • It’s difficult to find which packages are available in nixpkgs (and making a custom derivation is not always trivial)
      • Almost nobody documents how to install their tools with Nix (or add it to a shell.nix or equivalent)
      • … and so on

      Nix is awesome, of course, but it’s far from being the right tool for everyone.

      • borosilicate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 hours ago

        Those are all (IMO completely fair) assessments that can be distilled down to two:

        • nix is a subset of json. If that’s a “hard” language, I don’t know what to tell people. Try GUIX with scheme?
        • many of these points can be distilled to “nix’s documentation is notoriously hard/bad for beginners”
        • most power users use flakes but the community still doesn’t officially accept them (herding cats) even though they are ubiquitous far more sane, standardized way to do many of the things this article spends paragraphs talking about.
        • NixOS search exists so I’m not sure why it’s considered “hard to find packages”

        The title and objective of the article is about managing dependencies of scripts. Author spends many lines talking about “installing” a dependency but that advice falls apart the first time one of those dependencies even slightly changes. This cannot happen with Nix since you’d have to update the lock. That alone is the difference between 100% deterministic to “it doesn’t work on my machine because my package manager serves up X version of this package installed instead of Y in this specific release which has totally different, incompatible commands.” That NEVER happens to me because I have the dependencies LOCKED with nix.

        That is quite literally what nix was built to do; and of course they don’t mention nix which is why I’m here mentioning it. IMO, Nix is incredibly pertinent to exactly this article.

    • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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      15 hours ago

      People around here love to do anything in their power to achieve the exact properties of using Nix using ANYTHING other than Nix.

      And I don’t think its a bad thing. Otherwise we become too dependent on one platform / solution / developers. I would also like to have some Nix superpowers, without relying on Nix. However I don’t know what this post has anything to do with Nix.

      • borosilicate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 hours ago

        Good point. There’s zero danger of that though. The overused dependency in most everyone’s stack is actually Docker. If anything, Nix is a better way to lock/archive state for future runs.

        • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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          9 hours ago

          Nix might be the better concept overall, but its a specific concept that is not available everywhere. Docker on the other hand can be installed and used on any distribution, and removed too. Once you rely on Nix and its system, you can’t just remove it, its your lifestyle now.

          • borosilicate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            9 hours ago

            That’s silly. There’s a lot you can say about nix but you clearly don’t know much about it if you think it can’t be used across many platforms.
            You sure about that? https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-anywhere

            Also, you can’t remove Nix? Are you sure? You seem to not know anything at all about Nix but are just parroting various untrue things about it. Hilarious stuff.

            • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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              9 hours ago

              We are not talking about the package manager.

              Also, you can’t remove Nix?

              I don’t think you understood what I said.

              • borosilicate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                9 hours ago

                We literally are talking about the package manager.

                I understood very well. Maybe you don’t understand what you said.

                Great job gaslighting me:

                Once you rely on Nix and its system, you can’t just remove it, its your lifestyle now.

                • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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                  9 hours ago

                  Dude whats your problem now? Take a deep breath.

                  You understand that saying something does not always mean “literal”. Who the fuck think that when I say you cannot remove it, that I would mean it literally? I said its becoming part of your lifestyle. Think about it and stop being a little child with the replies. Nobody is gaslighting you, in fact you are gaslighting me or you are incredible stupid at understanding other people.

                  So with those replies of you its clear that you are toxic and this is what you get for. Have a nice day.

                  • borosilicate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                    9 hours ago

                    You’re the only one to engage in name calling and swearing here. I think it’s you that needs to take a deep breath and calm down.

                    Why would saying you can’t remove it NOT mean you can’t remove it? I don’t know what you’re on about now but I’ll just leave you to start frothing at the mouth and talking yourself in circles over someone making a short observation that you thought it necessary to refute despite demonstrating no knowledge whatsoever of the thing you criticize. Good day. Blocked with extreme prejudice.