| 25 Jun 2021 |
 ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | what actually happened was the rfc process got sidetracked and benched for later, and eelco went and did an implementation in nix unstable without any rfc | 07:07:55 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | that was like... almost 2 years ago, and flakes have been in limbo holding back nix releases since | 07:08:49 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | so that's why i want to rip out the flakes implementation, because it's the way i see to set things right and give it a fresh start through the proper process | 07:12:52 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | there's compat stuff for people who already (wrongly, imo) rely on it | 07:13:25 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | i don't consider this an extreme action, i just think it's the correct thing to do with a feature that never should've been there in the first place | 07:14:21 |
 Jez (he/him) | That is a looong time | 07:14:25 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | don't get me wrong, i have no opinion about whether or not flakes are good or the right step forward or what. when i say it never should have been there, i mean the implementation in mainline nix unstable | 07:15:24 |
| Jez (he/him) | this explains a lot about the state of nix documentation | 07:17:48 |
| Jez (he/him) | people seem to respond to the question "how do i use flakes?" with a link to eelco's article series on tweag.io | 07:18:26 |
| Jez (he/him) | but that's not documentation, it reads like a proposal | 07:18:41 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | my response is always "don't, because it's an unstable feature and you shouldn't rely on unstable functionality" | 07:19:33 |
| Jez (he/him) | and the same thing is true of the nix pills: it's always the go-to reference for new nixers, but it doesn't explain how to make a package, it reads like a proposal for how a functional language for defining packages should work | 07:19:37 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but nobody cares | 07:19:48 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | yeah nix documentation is a whole... thing | 07:20:09 |
| Jez (he/him) | which isn't to say that it isn't useful or well-written (it's both) but it won't teach you how to package something for nix | 07:20:21 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | i wish we promoted the wiki better | 07:20:28 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | did you know we used to have a wiki, and then that got abandoned and turned into the manual, and now we have a new wiki except not very much stuff is there | 07:21:03 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | but meh | 07:21:13 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | the new wiki feels like just a place to dump config snippets. i guess it's partly because nixos modules are self documenting and all | 07:22:18 |
| Jez (he/him) | that explains a lot about the manual too 😆 | 07:22:33 |
| Jez (he/him) | the configuration chapter in particular reads exactly like a dump of wiki content | 07:23:40 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | nix has a lot of... rough spots | 07:23:47 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | people are working on it | 07:24:13 |
| ash (it/its) 🏳️⚧️ | if you wanna contribute to documentation that's always welcome and sorely needed | 07:24:28 |
| Jez (he/him) | In reply to @colemickens:matrix.org
maybe that's a sign it addresses a serious, real pain point? it's also that the main nix room's traffic has hit a point where it's hard to follow discussion and potluck whether your question gets answered or missed, and a solution to that is to bud off a new room for one or more specific topics | 08:13:32 |
| Jez (he/him) | in this case it seems like a room for flakes help would be useful, and another for flakes dev might help move the discussion forward | 08:14:02 |
 CRTified | In reply to @jez:petrichor.me
it's also that the main nix room's traffic has hit a point where it's hard to follow discussion and potluck whether your question gets answered or missed, and a solution to that is to bud off a new room for one or more specific topics And with spaces, splitting of a new room is not really harmful in the sense that it might dilute the community. That's one of the problems I've had with IRC - discoverability of new channels was "hard", especially when you're using a bridge from XMPP or Matrix for it. | 08:30:33 |
|  Valodim joined the room. | 11:55:18 |
 colemickens | Here's the thing - I built my own pure eval pinning system, and just using flake.nix/flake.lock with flakes-compat with stable nix all works fine. | 17:59:50 |
| colemickens | It works just fine. | 17:59:54 |
