 | Nix on macOS | 1181 Members |
| “There are still many issues with the Darwin platform but most of it is quite usable.” — http://yves.gnu-darwin.org | 193 Servers |
| Nix on macOS | 1181 Members |
| “There are still many issues with the Darwin platform but most of it is quite usable.” — http://yves.gnu-darwin.org | 193 Servers |
| Sender | Message | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 8 Jan 2026 | ||
 markus.lohmayer | Not sure if this is a good place to ask, but let me try please. I am an admin using Nix for some years now on macOS, Ubuntu Linux, and NixOS. I am also using flakes like home-manager, nix-darwin, nixvim, etc. While nixpkgs-unstable seems to be the norm when looking at other people's flakes, I feel it might indeed be a bit too unstable for me and "my" users. So, I am thinking about switching my flakes (which usually contain many system (nix-darwin or nixos) and home configurations across different platforms) to stable branches of said input flakes. Unfortunately, it seems like I should complicate my flakes by having, say, nixpkgs-25.11-darwin for macOS, nixos-25.11 for nixos, and nixpkgs-25.11 for the Ubuntu machines as different inputs, and make flakes like home-manager or nixvim follow the correct nixpkgs depending on the platform, right? Obviously I am hoping to see less surprises during the year when rebuilding the systems and applying home-manager configurations. Will moving to release branches really give me a significantly smoother experience with Nix and will this offset the downside of having to deal with said complication (i.e. different flake inputs for different platforms)? If so, can someone please recommend me an example of how to manage this additional complexity in an easy way? | 08:28:28 |
 K900 | nixos-unstable is unstable in what way? | 09:03:56 |
| markus.lohmayer | Well, if I can reduce the friction with Nix, I would do it. That's also why I asked the question in this way (i.e. will moving to stable/release branches really reduce friction (while being on a given release)?). There certainly is friction. | 10:12:54 |
| K900 | What exactly do you mean by "friction"? | 10:20:08 |
| markus.lohmayer | In general terms, from time to time, after nix flake update, the config cannot be applied due to some error, or changes to the config are required (although these are often just deprecation warnings). | 10:28:28 |
| K900 | It depends on the kind of error, really | 10:29:02 |
| K900 | Also, keep in mind that stable is not LTS | 10:29:08 |
| K900 | You get 6 months of stable, and then you get all of those errors at the same time | 10:29:18 |
| markus.lohmayer | Ok thanks K900 , I take this as a recommendation to stay on unstable | 10:33:47 |
| K900 | Really the question is, what kinds of errors are you seeing | 10:34:10 |
| K900 | If it's packages breaking, that's less common on stable, yes | 10:34:19 |
| markus.lohmayer | If others can recommend to move to stable, I am of course interested in diverse opinions. | 10:34:29 |
| K900 | If it's module API or such breaking, that's delayed on stable, but generally unavoidable | 10:34:33 |
| K900 | And like, assuming you're pinning your inputs, which you should be, you can always rebuild without upgrading | 10:34:56 |
| markus.lohmayer | I will post the last error that made me think that way in a bit when I'm ready. | 10:35:18 |
| markus.lohmayer | I think on unstable, the recent bug that kept me from applying the configuration is "pkgs.buildEnv error: Can't use string ("/Applications") as an ARRAY ref while "strict refs" in use at /nix/store/qcnckfk16sad3j255jpw1hzfdj4ix2ph-builder.pl line 18.", which is probably the same as https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager/issues/8357 | 11:15:48 |
| markus.lohmayer | When it comes to broken packages, I usually managed to work around it by modifying the config such that the broken package comes from stable, but in this case I think it affects everything (or at least home-manager which I use to install a ton of packages). | 11:16:55 |
 Randy Eckenrode | Finally. I have everything in $lib/lib/swift/${swiftPlatform building in the stdlib package. Now I just need to make Swift use that instead of what it’s using. I’ve managed to avoid installing most of the stdlib, but some of the files are part of other components. They’ll need removed. | 12:27:24 |
 kdn | why are the $KEYS in linux-builder fed through the store? | 16:16:26 |
| kdn | where do I find SSHD logs on MacOS? is there anyting more than /usr/bin/log show --predicate 'process == "sshd"' --info --debug --last 2m? I'm just seeing this error there: [com.apple.network.libinfo:si_destination_compare] send failed: Invalid argument | 20:20:17 |
| kdn | * where do I find SSHD logs on MacOS? is there anyting more than on the client side I get permission denied | 20:30:46 |
| kdn | I can login to my primary user, but not to the additional user | 20:34:54 |
| kdn | I cannot force the password authentication for that user either | 20:40:17 |
| kdn | FYI: | 21:23:12 |
| kdn | is there any way to connect directly to the linux-builder's serial console? | 22:20:13 |
| kdn | FYI: I found it: | 23:23:37 |
| 9 Jan 2026 | ||
| Randy Eckenrode | | 01:52:13 |
| Randy Eckenrode | That’s with the separate stdlib. I think I’m going to have to do some patching to make it aware of both the dev and lib outputs in the stdlib package. | 01:52:46 |
| Randy Eckenrode | Yeah. I need to revisit the separate lib patch. I don’t think patching the compiler lookup is the right approach. It’s changing the semantics of the search. I should be augmenting the path. | 02:27:53 |
| Randy Eckenrode | * Yeah. I need to revisit the separate lib patch. I don’t think patching the compiler lookup is the right approach. It’s changing the semantics of the search. I should be augmenting the paths in updateRuntimeLibraryPaths. | 02:28:10 |