nix VS watchlog

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 found myself doing this as well and decided to write a simple tool to do it "automatically" for me.

You still can't use it with less, but at least it allows you to mark "segments" of the log without switching to that window and mashing enter.

https://gitlab.com/kevincox/watchlog

In general it is very nice. A common method is you create a `default.nix` file in the project you are working on and use tools that manage the deps for you. For example:

Rust+Cargo: https://gitlab.com/kevincox/watchlog/-/blob/22c877065f763b3d...

Node+NPM: https://gitlab.com/kevincox/kevincox-web-compiler/-/blob/9fa...

My only Ruby project is private but I just rolled my own with:

export "GEM_HOME=$out"