In reply to@ma27:nicht-so.sexy
given nix build foo, how would this differentiate between nixpkgs#foo and foo being an installable (e.g. a directory in the cwd with a flake.nix inside)?

ni() {
        if [ "$#" -eq 0 ]; then
                echo "please specify packages to install"
                return 1
        fi
        opts=()
        for i in $@; do
                opts+="nixpkgs#$i"
        done
        echo "==> Installing: $opts"
        nix shell $opts
}

In reply to @qyriad:katesiria.org
Nix (including Lix) has a general problem where a big part of its entire purpose is to avoid implicit state, specifically the combination of those two. We can't avoid state, and lots of things have to happen implicitly, but we should avoid state being implicit unless there is a really really good reason. <nixpkgs> and nixpkgs in the flake registry were both considered to have sufficiently good reason: you need Nixpkgs to do literally anything. But under nix-channel, and with the online flake registry on non-NixOS, both can point to different things depending on context and from behind-the-scenes changes (on NixOS unstable, and the new release, both will point to the system's Nixpkgs thanks to Jade).

Both <> search paths and the flake registry have been rightfully criticized, but their introduction was not without reason: needing to specify a URL, even an abbrevited one like github:NixOS/nixpkgs, any time you need anything would be really fucking annoying. So there are times when implicit state is necessary for usability, but when we do, we need to be very careful when designing it so we don't fall into more traps and create more confusing caveats for users to be aware of

In reply to @mangoiv.:matrix.org
I don’t think the idea of nix being stateless extends very well to the commands you use to interact with it.

In reply to @mangoiv.:matrix.org
I don’t think the idea of nix being stateless extends very well to the commands you use to interact with it.

In reply to @mangoiv.:matrix.org
I think convenience and what a user would expect should go over ideal, especially when there’s already a habit of doing these things, why not go all the way