Christ that's a lot of work, just to start working on work. I really want to like Nix, but the UX is frankly offputting. I really hope it improves to the point that it can be mindlessly installed.
I wouldn’t take this one blog post as gospel about how to use Nix.
I’m not denying that it’s complicated, but doing declarative package management is not the only way to dip your toes into Nix. You can use it pretty much as a conventional package manager with none of the upsides of declarative package management (but none of the complexity either).
On the surface level for people migrating from existing package managers, nix-env is approximately as complicated as something like pacman. You just need the command for installing, removing and updating (well, the 2 commands for updating, but that’s the only extra complexity).
Here is the official manual page for Basic Package Management. No blog post necessary. This covers the majority of it, but I’d say if you read the entire section on Package Management, then you’ll get an idea of how it works and be able to install, update and uninstall things (as well as a bit more).
Also, there is no “right way”. What I suggested was the way to get parity with standard package managers. There are many different ways to use it, because it is a very flexible tool. There’s no reason to learn every single one to get started with it.
Yes, this is what I tried too. What you describe as “hands on” is precisely what my original complaint is about. It was even more difficult (impossible?) for me due to the case-sensitive FS setting being enabled on my Mac.
Everything about first contact with Nix is off putting. I really wish it weren’t so :/
I think that's a bit unfair to the author, whose goal is clearly to document their own setup on a didactic way rather than to say
> here, paste this into your terminal for the easiest way to get up and running with Nix in a fashion that's representative of community common practices
I think it's a good blog post which, carefully read, teaches lots of useful things about Nix in a pretty concise way.
It's totally fair to point out that this doesn't represent a path of least resistance to enjoying the benefits of Nix. But I don't love the way your short comment kinda frames the blog post's job as doing something for Nix, either, you know?
I don't like the idea of this guy or anyone else feeling punished or chastised when their Nix-related blog posts become visible because those posts don't function as good marketing for Nix. Having a post about your Nix journey blow up should yield encouraging responses from fellow Nix users, right?
I don't know if it should. Like this is neat and all but it's incredibly overcomplicated and for any readers unfamiliar with the tooling (which is most) it's off-putting.
If the audience was Nix users, then it would be different.
It's kinda like if you bought a fancy new camera and demonstrated your process but all your photos were out of focus, framed badly and lit poorly because you're into that for some reason. Would fellow fancy new camera enthusiasts cheer? Would folks who don't know about your fancy new camera think it's a good camera?
The post directly says that the easy path is more complicated, which just isn't true. It will dissuade new users from even trying Nix. That is a disservice.
