16 ms·

Lengths people will go to rediscover Nix/Guix is beyond me

by trashcan2137 5mo ago

3abiton 5mo ago
I don't see the connection though?
- Eufrat 5mo ago
  Nix provides declarative, reproducible builds. So, ostensibly, if you had your build system using Nix, then some of the issues here go away. Unfortunately, Nix is also not how most people function. You have to do things the Nix way, period. The value in part comes from this strong opinion, but it also makes it inherently niche. Most people do not want to learn an entire new language/paradigm just so they can get this feature. And so it becomes a chicken and egg problem. IMHO, I think it also suffers from a little bit of snobbery and poor naming (Nix vs. NixOS vs. Nixpkgs) which makes it that much harder to get traction.
  - diffeomorphism 5mo ago
    There are different notions of "reproducible". Nix does not automatically make builds reproducible in the way that matters here: https://reproducible.nixos.org https://reproducible.nixos.org It is still good at that but the difference to other distros is rather small: https://reproducible-builds.org/citests/ https://reproducible-builds.org/citests/
- trashcan2137 5mo ago
  Nix, if not used incorrectly (and they really make it hard to use it, both correctly and incorrectly lol), gives you reproducible and verifiable builds. Unfortunately I have to agree with the sibling comment that it suffers from poor naming and the docs are very hard to grok which makes it harder to get traction. I really hate the idea of `it's all sales at the end of the day` but if Nix could figure how to "sell" itself to more people then we would probably have less of those problems.
Zopieux 5mo ago
Reading the paragraph on hash pinning and "map lookup files" (lockfiles) made me audibly sigh.
sunshowers 5mo ago
If it doesn't work on Windows, it is not a full replacement.
mkj 5mo ago
Isn't Nix just reinventing what Vesta did for software reproducibility decades earlier? https://vesta.sourceforge.net/ https://vesta.sourceforge.net/

Lengths people will go to rediscover Nix/Guix is beyond me

3abiton 5mo ago

I don't see the connection though?

Eufrat 5mo ago
Nix provides declarative, reproducible builds. So, ostensibly, if you had your build system using Nix, then some of the issues here go away. Unfortunately, Nix is also not how most people function. You have to do things the Nix way, period. The value in part comes from this strong opinion, but it also makes it inherently niche. Most people do not want to learn an entire new language/paradigm just so they can get this feature. And so it becomes a chicken and egg problem. IMHO, I think it also suffers from a little bit of snobbery and poor naming (Nix vs. NixOS vs. Nixpkgs) which makes it that much harder to get traction.
- diffeomorphism 5mo ago
  There are different notions of "reproducible". Nix does not automatically make builds reproducible in the way that matters here: https://reproducible.nixos.org https://reproducible.nixos.org It is still good at that but the difference to other distros is rather small: https://reproducible-builds.org/citests/ https://reproducible-builds.org/citests/
trashcan2137 5mo ago
Nix, if not used incorrectly (and they really make it hard to use it, both correctly and incorrectly lol), gives you reproducible and verifiable builds. Unfortunately I have to agree with the sibling comment that it suffers from poor naming and the docs are very hard to grok which makes it harder to get traction. I really hate the idea of `it's all sales at the end of the day` but if Nix could figure how to "sell" itself to more people then we would probably have less of those problems.

Zopieux 5mo ago

Reading the paragraph on hash pinning and "map lookup files" (lockfiles) made me audibly sigh.

sunshowers 5mo ago

If it doesn't work on Windows, it is not a full replacement.

mkj 5mo ago

Isn't Nix just reinventing what Vesta did for software reproducibility decades earlier? https://vesta.sourceforge.net/ https://vesta.sourceforge.net/