2022-10-14 Nix team meeting minutes #4

Development Nix
1

Agenda

  • wrap up published roadmap (15min)
  • team invariants/principles (45min and beyond!)
  • draft for meeting #5: prioritize roadmap items

Meeting notes

  • Review of the vision PR (comments directly on the PR)
  • Team invariants discussion
    • Controversial example: Allow restricting possible runtime references by ncfavier · Pull Request #7087 · NixOS/nix · GitHub
    • Braindump of core principles: What is important in the codebase?
      • Nix-specifics
        • Reproducible builds
        • Hermetic evaluation
        • Immutable store
        • Small language surface
      • General good principles
        • Discoverability and low surprises
        • Backwards-compatibility
        • Performance
        • Portability (up to a certain point)
        • Reliability & testing
        • Well-documented
        • Small footprint ‑ Nix should stay light-weight
          • Runtime footprint
          • Bootstraping complexity
        • Balance between flexibility and reliable conventions
        • Anything we’re not sure about should start experimental

What’s next?

  • Finish the vision & roadmap
  • Contributor guide
  • Discuss specific issues