Comment by ghusbands

> I just checked, and "First steps with Nix" starts with "Ad hoc shell environments", not anything to do with `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix`

So many people get started with Nix, not NixOS. Once see how useful it is, they then begin migrating their existing systems over to NixOS.

Not only that, but ad hoc shell environments are one the most common use cases. Putting that in the forefront of the official documentation is helpful. I also somehow can't help but think that if the official documentation followed your advice and started off with configuration.nix before explaining the Nix basics, you'd have a problem with that just the same.

> btrfs being unstable persists for a couple of reasons

Fedora uses it by default as does openSUSE. Meta uses it for thousands of their own servers. The very specific RAID configuration is a non-issue for 99.9 percent of people. If they have need of it they'll use something else.

> I'm pretty sure the main thing holding it back is that it's just too hard to use and people silently abandon it.

That's why you use the tools to make it easy. Use the Determinate Nix installer, then install Fleek. I haven't read the Nix manual in at least 5 years.

> But for any first-time user, I'd expect them to be SOL and stuck spending a Linux evening digging through the Nix manuals to figure out how to configure their system. (I just checked, and "First steps with Nix" starts with "Ad hoc shell environments", not anything to do with `/etc/nixos/configuration.nix`)

What? This is not what most users will be doing, no.

> it's filled with Nix-isms

Which part?

For the commands, update install upgrade uninstall are straight the same.

There's an additional -A on install, but you don't need to understand it. The commands are even handed over to you on https://search.nixos.org/packages.

There's an additional nixpkgs prefix but it's perfectly understandable that it's coming from the channel name:

    # nix-channel --list
    nixpkgs https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-23.05-darwin

It's really not out of this world to mentally map this to homebrew taps or apt repos.

nix-env --query is different from homebrew but its design is much the same as pacman -Q and people have no trouble with that (I won't even dive on apt-get vs dpkg vs apt-cache)

nix-env -f <github archive url> --install nixos-23.05.tar.gz is such because it's the branch name, 88f63d51109.tar.gz is just the commit sha. These are GitHub things. Providing the source of packages as a --file option is hardly inscrutable nor even a nix-only thing.

But if you really want a parallel with homebrew, then homebrew has taps, and nixpkgs has channels: nix-channel --add <url> name is directly equivalent to brew tap user/repo <url>, down to installing with brew install user/repo/package vs nix-env --install -A name.package.

And there it is, you have your 1:1 nixism-free homebrew:nixpkgs replacement, and can manage your packages with nix just like you do with homebrew.

> there's now a large quantity of tooling that makes it as easy to work with as Homebrew

My point is that there is no tool that could "make it as easy to work with as homebrew" because homebrew:nixpkgs is already 1:1, and people confused by using nix this way would equally be confused by using homebrew.

You mentioned Fleek, which seems like a nice tool, but managing home is outside the scope of homebrew so I don't see how it follows that it makes nix "as easy as homebrew". It apparently has some homebrew bits, but it's a third party tool to both homebrew and nix.

Don't get me wrong, tools can be nice, I use nix-darwin myself, not too sure about going home-manager yet.

---

Now that second part where I talk about shell.nix, maybe it's this one you took issue with? I aimed it at being a next step, not addressing the above point, but attempting to demonstrate the immediate value it can give without understanding the slightest bit of nix and especially eschewing all the nix-specific vernacular.

The first time it is encountered, this is probably what a reasonable non-nixer vaguely interested in would see:

    {
      pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {},
      # ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
      # okay so I've seen nixpkgs before, that's my channel, where the packages come from
      # that `?` looks odd but well, whatever, there's a "pkgs" thing and an import of sorts.
    }:
    pkgs.mkShell {
    # ^^^^^^^^^^
    # this is:
    # - a shell.nix file
    # - that has been described to me as being used by a `nix-shell` command
    # - and that thing is name mkShell
    # so probably it's going to tell things how to make that shell
      buildInputs = [
        pkgs.ruby_3_2;
        # here's that pkgs that I've seen above
        # it has a dot plus a package name just like when I did nix-env --install
        # except it had nixpkgs before the dot there
        # oh, I see "pkgs ? import ..." sort of creates that variable or whatever from nixpkgs
        # so this is a list of packages from nixpkgs
      ];
      # and so that make a shell thing uses that list to get its dependencies
      # and it's getting named buildInputs, whatever
    }
    # so that's it, it makes a shell using a list of packages from nixpkgs

And proceed to add whatever package they see fit by looking them up on the search page. Understanding of nixisms doesn't matter.

Second example: "let .. in" isn't a very special nix construct, "let" is extremely frequently used in a number of languages (including JS) to define variables. "whatever .. in" is a very common construct as well. It's quite obvious that the example hoists out a few elements by assigning variables between "let" and "in", possibly creating some form of scope after "in". It also introduces "shellHook", which literally contains a multiline bash string; again I feel like it's quite obvious that the "make shell" thingy is going to call that hook at some point.

Last bits shows that the nixpkgs channel can be replaced with fetchTarball + a GitHub tarball archive URL, and that you can have multiple of these at once with different names, referencing packages from one or the other.

> that most people used to imperative thinking would not grok.

I can hear that the syntax is an oddball, but even then that example is really not that hard to wrap one's head around for anyone who has a passing familiarity with programming, whether functional or imperative.

Doesn't mean that they would fully appreciate that { foo ? "bleh" }: whatevs = 42 is actually a function definition equivalent to JS function(foo = "bleh") { return { "whatevs": 42 }; } but that's immaterial to understanding what is happening here and even being able to add/remove packages, change versions, pin sources, or hack that shell bit and ultimately have it be pragmatically useful.

So I don't think the nixisms are any problem in this case because they can be completely ignored. I'm also wondering if people have an epidermic reaction to the syntax, combined with the constant rumour that nix is hard and hardly usable does not set them up for success.

I mean, would people be as hung up if it were written this way?

   args:
     pkgs: <nixpkgs>
   let:
     ruby: pkgs.ruby_3_2;
     whatevs: pkgs.whatevs42;
   in:
     pkgs.mkShell:
       buildInputs:
         - ruby
         - whatevs
         - pkgs.foobar
       shellHook: |
          export RUBY_VERSION="$(ruby -e 'puts RUBY_VERSION.gsub(/\d+$/, "0")')"
          export GEM_HOME="$(pwd)/vendor/bundle/ruby/$RUBY_VERSION"
          export BUNDLE_PATH="$(pwd)/vendor/bundle"
          export PATH="$GEM_HOME/bin:$PATH"

or this way?

    function(pkgs = import(NixPath.resolve('nixpkgs'))) {
      let ruby = pkgs.ruby_3_2;
      let whatevs = pkgs.whatevs42;
    
      return pkgs.mkShell({
        buildInputs: [
          ruby,
          whatevs,
          pkgs.foobar,
        ],
        shellHook: `
          export RUBY_VERSION="$(ruby -e 'puts RUBY_VERSION.gsub(/\d+$/, "0")')"
          export GEM_HOME="$(pwd)/vendor/bundle/ruby/$RUBY_VERSION"
          export BUNDLE_PATH="$(pwd)/vendor/bundle"
          export PATH="$GEM_HOME/bin:$PATH"
        `
      });
    }

Because at the end of the day, it's not that different in complexity, from, say, a Gemfile, a PKGBUILD, or a homebrew formula.