Post #1820390
2026-04-30 14:11 UTC
Replies (8)
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@zwarich@hachyderm.io 2026-04-30 14:16
@jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz Well, at least after you do it once it will hopefully be the same every time after that. In practice, I don't know if this is actually the case.
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@t0yv0@vmst.io 2026-05-01 02:19
@jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz I've packaged software that mixes some obscure deps and have been running for ~8 years now across many machines. The tinkering does stop. At work I only introduce it we need to run many esoteric typically old/dead native CLIs that conflict over their lib deps. Essentially Nix solves the DLL hell in that case and lets you deploy incompatible native CLIs in a single container or VM.
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@liamoc@types.pl 2026-04-30 14:54
@jonmsterling it REALLY shits me when I investigate installing a tool and rather than figure out how to package it properly for normal people to use they just give a nix formula. Looking at you, ghcjs.
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@cxandru@types.pl 2026-04-30 15:34
@jonmsterling Nix: same exact versions of your dependencies on everyone's machines and CI and possible docker image artefacts. Given previous posts I've seen on here of people not having the same latex environments as their coauthors, I don't understand the aversion to learning a genuinely useful technology, especially since, if properly set up, only one person on the team needs to deeply understand it
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@totbwf@types.pl 2026-04-30 16:03
@jonmsterling It is a bad solution to a real problem 😔
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@JakeGinesin@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-30 16:37
@jonmsterling apologies for the self-promote, but you might find this blog post I've written interesting: https://jakegines.in/blog/2025/why-nix TL;DR: If you don't do any serious customization of your system, just use a mac and you will be okay. However, if your workflows are reliant on even somewhat complicated custom tooling, nix is absolutely unbeatable. Separately, as the tools, systems, and workflows from PL/FM become more applicable to real-world systems, I believe nix's reproducibility story becomes extremely motivating. After all, why just have reproducible builds when we can have reproducible verification as well?
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@tauroid@sharkey.tauro.id 2026-04-30 21:09
@jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz As a one shot never-to-be-maintained-but-should-be-reproducible tech demo I once set up an ungodly frankenstein tower involving custom patched emscripten and custom patched python packages running on pyodide on top of that. And it was pretty much a no brainer for that compared to letting a bunch of unrelated build systems walk over each other and my desktop environment
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@cdrichards@mathstodon.xyz 2026-04-30 21:51
@jonmsterling I once applied for job that revealed itself, an interview at a time, to be co-extensive with “Nix sysadmin”. I wish that company well.