| 25 Nov 2023 |
 @bzzm3r:matrix.org | In reply to @tejing:matrix.org
That's certainly a better place than I'd thought of yet. Another possibility is to add something directly on https://nixos.org/learn, maybe? Perhaps both. We want accessibility, since this is the most likely reason for a nixos user to start learning the nix language and getting deeper into the nix ecosystem, but nix.dev does seem like a better place for the guide to actually live. hmm, yeah, i have seen various sections in the manuals linked under nixos.org which give fairly specific guide/recipe style advice (as in, using some of the more general concepts discussed in order to address the specific use cases where they often come up...for example i remember running into some BLAS/LAPACK setup mini-guides...) | 06:54:52 |
| @bzzm3r:matrix.org | but these tend to be very short too? | 06:55:00 |
| @bzzm3r:matrix.org | not entirely sure, but keep in mind that i'm not on the docs team, and just a bystander. i'm sure someone more qualified will be around soon in order to help answer this definitively | 06:55:44 |
| @bzzm3r:matrix.org | In reply to @proofconstruction:matrix.org
I was just confused about "why the thing people seem to be using the most" is not the thing we are also documenting.
Indeed this is a giant problem: the thing people are using the most is also the most broken. This is not really even my opinion, but a matter of technical fact. I even use flakes for my own system configurations, but this is still the case largely because I, like so many, adopted that workflow without any awareness of the problems lurking beneath the surface (also at the surface; flake.nix is not even a valid Nix file!)
I made an attempt to switch from a flakes based NixOS configuration, to a npins managed standard configuration.nix based one. I almost got there, but couldn't figure out the last trick (getting nixos-rebuild to use the pinned packages instead of whatever it has in store). I found various bits of information about it on the internet (in the context of niv, which I think is mostly applicable here, but ultimately couldn't figure out the last little bit (getting nixos-rebuild switch to work), and I am conceptually lost enough now that the most I can do is write out a Discourse post discussing the situation, and hoping for the best.
So, for now, I am tucking my tail between my legs and trotting off back to flakes.nix. The solution might lie in simply doing a live reboot from an iso that is built that is built using an npins managed nixpkgs from the start (rather than rebuild switching into it).
But yeah, I can see why you'd just continue carrying on with flakes.nix, if yours is already quite complicated (mine isn't, it's just a glorified pinned entrypoint into my configuration modules).
| 20:53:24 |
| @bzzm3r:matrix.org | I've also had one small victory in the last two weeks, which is that I spent quite a bit of time, writing quite a bit of Nix. (I got caught up in a very silly project, that just happened to have this side-benefit: configuring my starship prompt using only Nix.)
In general, Nix-lang is far more readable for me (I'm not sure why I found overlays confusing anymore; it's just attribute overrides 🤷, kind of like a functor). | 20:55:08 |
| @bzzm3r:matrix.org | While I'm not sure I can make it to weekly meetings (anxiety), I think I'm slowly clobbering together enough to eventually contribute more documentation. | 20:56:40 |
| 26 Nov 2023 |
 infinisil | In reply to @bzzm3r:matrix.org
I made an attempt to switch from a flakes based NixOS configuration, to a npins managed standard configuration.nix based one. I almost got there, but couldn't figure out the last trick (getting nixos-rebuild to use the pinned packages instead of whatever it has in store). I found various bits of information about it on the internet (in the context of niv, which I think is mostly applicable here, but ultimately couldn't figure out the last little bit (getting nixos-rebuild switch to work), and I am conceptually lost enough now that the most I can do is write out a Discourse post discussing the situation, and hoping for the best.
So, for now, I am tucking my tail between my legs and trotting off back to flakes.nix. The solution might lie in simply doing a live reboot from an iso that is built that is built using an npins managed nixpkgs from the start (rather than rebuild switching into it).
But yeah, I can see why you'd just continue carrying on with flakes.nix, if yours is already quite complicated (mine isn't, it's just a glorified pinned entrypoint into my configuration modules).
Yeah nixos-rebuild really can't do that, which is why I wrote a small wrapper in https://github.com/infinisil/sanix | 07:03:14 |
| infinisil | I wrote this exactly for what you were trying :) | 07:04:42 |
 @olafklingt:matrix.org | where do i find the functions pkgs.nixos and pkgs.path in the nixpkgs manual? only found nixos but pkgs.path nowhere. | 13:54:26 |
