nix VS nix-bundle

I was able to make the switch over cold turkey after ~9 years of ArchLinux.

By sheer happenstance, I blogged earlier this week about one particular killer feature that doesn't get enough air time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27344677

My not-flake-yet configuration can be found at https://github.com/rraval/nix

> How do NixOS users typically manage software that is not a Nix package

By writing a Nix package for it (I don't mean for this to sound flippant, tone is a bit hard to convey over text).

For example I have this alpha quality rust binary that I'm developing but I also want a stable version installed at the OS level. I write a Nix package and simply compose it into my overall NixOS configuration alongside the more official Nixpkgs: https://github.com/rraval/nix/blob/master/git-nomad.nix

> like a source code tarball where you would traditionally run configure && make && make install?

Nix has a bunch of defaults that make a conventional package like this straightforward.

Here's a package for a vanilla C binary + library that does the `autoreconf && ./configure && make && make install` dance: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/tools/secu...

It's almost a little misleading because the actual steps are largely inherited from the defaults, you can read more about `stdenv.mkDerivation` here: https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/fundamentals-of-stdenv.ht...

I admit that there is an element of, "but I chose an obscure and challenging linux variant, waaah why isn't it supported" here, but (a) there's currently no flatpak and (b) when, for goodness sakes, will major linux projects begin packaging for Nix/NixOS as a matter of course?

It's not hard, and the benefits go far outside merely supporting Nix, as e.g. a flake.nix file would allow this project to generate docker images, and appImage images, as basically afterthoughts. (See e.g. https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle.)

Nix flake support would also provide a perfectly reproducible build environment, which can help clarify dependencies, and thus help the project build achieve idempotence, but I'll save the full shill for some github issue.

In fact, I'm inclined to roll up my shirtsleeves and help make this real.

https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle perhaps?

Another way to approach this would be to advocate Nix as the build system for Flatpak or AppImage. Don't know what the status is of nix-bundle, but if it is possible to turn a Nix package into an AppImage with little extra work that would be ideal.

Nix itself is more focused on "distribute from this host with nix, to this other host with nix".

Though, here is e.g. https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle, which is supported as an experimental command in nix 2.4.

I believe this tool does: https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle

Yes, it's extremely powerful once you truly understand Nix.

There are efforts to improve documentation, but it still is lacking (I think the biggest problem is that Nix is so big, not just the OS but it can be utilized as a build system).

Just with NixOS is not exactly clear how can you for example build your custom image.

I think https://nix.dev/ is approaching the documentation from the right direction.

There are also many pieces that people built that you need to find.

For example some things that I found accidentally:

* https://github.com/matthewbauer/nix-bundle

* https://github.com/cleverca22/not-os

Unfortunately those side projects often have even worse documentation.