| 17 Jul 2023 |
 @brian:bmcgee.ie | Btw, I'll be at NixCon 🥳 | 18:13:38 |
 infinisil | I guess I also really don't like how the documentation team is seemingly put into the responsibility to document Flakes. | 18:16:49 |
| infinisil | The people adding a new feature should be responsible for documenting it and ensuring it's well-designed so it can be stabilised | 18:18:22 |
| infinisil | This would also set a precedent that the docs team will document whatever ill-designed and barely-documented feature gets merged into Nix | 18:19:40 |
| @brian:bmcgee.ie | Yeah that's a fair point. I wanted to know what the schema was for the json output when using `nix flake show` and had to look at the source ... no bueno | 18:19:47 |
| @brian:bmcgee.ie | If you don't document something after you write it because it's experimental and subject to change then you can't really expect the docs team to do the same | 18:21:33 |
| infinisil | Also, the more general precedent of how RFCs can just be canceled, merged as experimental if you have the right commit bit, encouraged to be used by everybody if you have an audience, and then require teams to adapt to it | 18:21:37 |
| infinisil | Relevant is Alyssa Ross's comment here: https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/136#discussion_r987278726 | 18:22:22 |
| @brian:bmcgee.ie | I agree with the comment, if it's experimental, break it as necessary. As a flakes user I accept the churn, and I'll update as necessary. I know there will be a lot of people unhappy about any kind of breakage but I think this would be a valuable lesson as to why you don't let experimental features sit for long enough to become de facto use cases for a large chunk of people rather than stabilising them | 18:26:31 |
| infinisil | Yeah, that's gonna be really hard though, there's third-party products being built daily on top of experimental flakes without any care in the world (if only that kind of effort went into flakes stabilisation) | 18:27:48 |
| infinisil | I really like John Ericson's suggestions for what Nix should become here: https://github.com/NixOS/rfcs/pull/136#discussion_r1246035453 | 18:29:15 |
 John Ericson | :) | 18:29:50 |
| John Ericson | I get that flakes have driven a lot of new usage, but that is just because everything else was so unpolished | 18:30:11 |
| John Ericson | the bar was so low | 18:30:15 |
| John Ericson | Flakes are a "fast food" that kinda tastes good to start but ultimately fails to truly solve any problems | 18:30:45 |
| John Ericson | We have to believe the choices are not just "Flakes" or "unpolished unusuable to non-experts" | 18:31:32 |
 asymmetric | In reply to @infinisil:matrix.org
This would also set a precedent that the docs team will document whatever ill-designed and barely-documented feature gets merged into Nix I agree with most of your other points, but this precedent has definitely already been set by stable nix+nixpkgs, at least the part about us having to ex post document barely-documented stuff | 18:32:23 |
| infinisil | We can't deny that Flakes does solve some problems. Though it also introduces a whole bunch of new problems along the way, problems which shouldn't be necessary | 18:32:36 |
| infinisil | In reply to @asymmetric:matrix.dapp.org.uk
I agree with most of your other points, but this precedent has definitely already been set by stable nix+nixpkgs, at least the part about us having to ex post document barely-documented stuff Hehe fair enough, would like to get away from that though :P | 18:33:17 |
| asymmetric | In reply to @Ericson2314:matrix.org
Flakes are a "fast food" that kinda tastes good to start but ultimately fails to truly solve any problems i think this is subjective. i really like flakes and for my usecases, they have almost completely replaced the stable tooling. but the other problems still stand, and it is factually still experimental, so I think we should focus on that, rather than value judgements | 18:33:32 |
| asymmetric | In reply to @Ericson2314:matrix.org
Flakes are a "fast food" that kinda tastes good to start but ultimately fails to truly solve any problems * i think this is subjective. i really like flakes and for my usecases, they have almost completely replaced the stable tooling. but the other problems still stand (missing feature parity), and it is factually still experimental, so I think we should focus on that, rather than value judgements | 18:33:50 |
| asymmetric | * i think this is subjective. i really like flakes and for my usecases, they have almost completely replaced the stable tooling. but the other problems still stand (e.g. missing feature parity), and it is factually still experimental, so I think we should focus on that, rather than value judgements | 18:34:42 |
| John Ericson | opinions are somewhat inevitable for writing tutorials not reference docs | 18:35:06 |
| John Ericson | the fact here is that flakes are unstable and unstable has to mean something | 18:35:23 |
| John Ericson | Flakes creating problems as fast as they solve problems I suppose could be an opinion | 18:36:18 |
| John Ericson | but we can focus on the above an ignore that | 18:36:24 |
| John Ericson | if we want to stick to "facts" and avoid "opinions" | 18:36:40 |
| asymmetric | In reply to @Ericson2314:matrix.org
the fact here is that flakes are unstable and unstable has to mean something yeah fully agreed on that. which i think is why we decided to draw the line there for nix.dev 🙂 | 18:36:42 |
| John Ericson | :) | 18:36:50 |
| John Ericson | <3 | 18:36:55 |
