dotfiles VS nix

> And I don't mean a lack of documentation — what I mean is that the obvious decisions that have been taken (naming everything "Nix", using Haskell as a base for the syntax, ...)

I agree that the name is bad and has always been bad. I wonder what they were thinking. But the syntax of the Nix language is not based on Haskell. It would be better if it were, but the Nix syntax is actually based on trying to twist a functional language into looking like a Unix-style configuration file. It's horrible, and conceptually big details like "this is a function" is hidden in very subtle syntax (a single colon). The liberal use of semicolons and the use of space-separated lists is another concession to looking like a config file. I feel Nix would have been better if it didn't try to cater to older conventions in this way. Sometimes the old ways are just bad. Incidentally, one of the big advantages of Guix (a Nix fork/derivative) is that it uses Scheme as its declaration/configuration language.

I switched to Nix some years ago on my desktop system. While I was initially quite frustrated at lots of the paper cuts - particularly the byzantine design of Nixpkgs itself which is built around manual programming with fixed-point combinators - I was carried through by two things:

1) I was intellectually convinced that the basic premise was sound.

2) Getting a basic desktop system running doesn't require you to understand all the complexity. NixOS works really well out of the box with its standard settings, and making basic configuration changes and adding/removing packages doesn't require you to know anything about the Nix language or the design of Nixpkgs.

Not much later I was able to do pretty radical things like changing the version of LLVM used by Mesa on my system, to work around a defect in AMDs GPU drivers[0]. I have no idea how I would do something like that on Debian. Even better, when this workaround later became unnecessary, I just removed the pertinent parts from my configuration file, and it was like it was never there. My system is fully declarative and not soiled by the remnants of previous hacks.

[0]: https://github.com/athas/dotfiles/blob/d495aeb85fe38569eb212...

> https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/9911#issuecomment-19252073...

As we covered in my last post, NixOS is a amazing Linux distribution for creating stable and declared environments. Now while this is amazing for a desktop setup, it is also perfect for a home-server or home-lab.

(Nix itself is slowly chugging along with Windows via MinGW - https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nix-on-windows/1113/108 and https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/1320 , for example.)

Nix is a cross-platform package manager. It uses the nix programming language. Nix and NixOs are often used in the same context, but while the first is a package manager, the latter is a linux distribution based on nix.

Today I want to talk to you about Nixos. What is it? Nixos is a declarative and reproducible OS, partly taking the words used on their own page. What does that mean?

Software developers often want to customize:

1. their home environments: for packages (some reach for brew on MacOS) and configurations (dotfiles, and some reach for stow).

2. their development shells: for build dependencies (compilers, SDKs, libraries), tools (LSP, linters, formatters, debuggers), and services (runtime, database). Some reach for devcontainers here.

3. or even their operating systems: for development, for CI, for deployment, or for personal use.

Nix provision all of the above in the same language, with Nixpkgs, NixOS, home-manager, and devShells such as https://devenv.sh/. What's more, Nix is (https://nixos.org/):

- reproducible: what works on your dev machine also works in CI in prod,

- declarative: you version control and review your configurations and infrastructure as code, at a reasonable level of abstraction,

- reliable: all changes are atomic with easy roll back.

Hopping from one distro to another with a different package manager might require some time to adapt. Using a package manager that can be installed on most distro is one way to help you get to work faster. Flatpak is one of them; other alternative are Snap, Nix or Homebrew. Flatpak is a good starter, and if you have a bunch of free time, I suggest trying Nix.

- it reduces bloat, because you can generate an environment or OS image with only the software needed to run a specific program or service

My guess is that a big efficiency gain would come from the second point, because you don't waste CPU on code that you don't use.

Does this make sense? Has anyone explored this?

[0]: https://nixos.org

1) Setting up the development environment - I currently use devcontainers for most things, but may also dig into nix -> isolated, portable, repeatable development environment 2) Exploring Echo - understand routing, requests, response, etc. 3) Incorporate Templ - integration with Echo, template composition, etc. 4) Integrating TailwindCSS - config for use with Echo/Templ, development cycle, deployment, etc. 5) Add in HTMX - endpoints, template structure, concepts, etc. 6) hyperscript for interactivity - client side interactivity