The Nix Hour, a weekly Nix Q&A Lecture by Tweag

Announcements
21

The Nix Hour has continued weekly since the last message, and the next one will be today in ~1.5 hours at 19:00 CEST in this Jitsi (best if you have questions yourself) or live on YouTube if you just want to listen in!

Due to me going on a vacation, the following two Nix Hours will be skipped however, leading to a timeline like this:

  • 2023-06-20 (today): Nix Hour #34
  • 2023-06-27: Skipped!
  • 2023-07-04: Skipped!
  • 2023-07-11: Nix Hour #35

In case you’re wondering where the Nix Hour went next week and when it is expected to be back :slight_smile:

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22

We’re trying to find a new time for the Nix Hour. If you’re interested to join, especially if you haven’t been able so far, please vote in this post:

The timeline for the next few Nix hours is as follows:

  • Tuesday, 2023-08-01T17:00:00Z: Nix Hour #38
  • Tuesday, 2023-08-08T17:00:00Z: Nix Hour #39
  • Thursday, 2023-08-16T22:00:00Z, time to be decided based on the above poll: Nix Hour #40
23

The new time is decided, it will be Thursdays 18:00 CEST, the next one being

  • Nix Hour #40 on 2023-08-17T16:00:00Z
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24

Just wanted to drop in and say that this is really helpful. Watching you finding answers helped me to answer a lot things that come up day to day.

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25

Happy to help!

Just a note that we will not have a Nix Hour next week since I’ll be traveling for Nixcon.
But I will have a lightning talk at Nixcon to talk about the Nix Hour!
Edit: I felt sick and couldn’t have the talk, maybe next year :slight_smile:

So we expect the next Nix Hours to be like this:

  • 2023-08-31T16:00:00Z: Nix Hour #42 (meeting for questions, stream)
  • 2023-09-07T16:00:00Z : Skipped for Nixcon.
  • 2023-09-14T16:00:00Z : Nix Hour #43
  • …
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26

Because we keep running into various problems with the main Jitsi instance, I decided to switch to a different instance this week, https://meet.init7.net/. The instance is hosted by a very loved and techy ISP provider in Switzerland, so not only do I trust them, but it’s also very close to me, so the delay should be smaller too!
In addition to more stability, it also won’t require any authentication, and there won’t be a message about the room name being insecure.

New meeting link: https://meet.zrh.init7.net/nix-hour
Next meeting time: 2023-09-14T16:00:00Z
YouTube stream: https://youtube.com/live/T79B4t80QZ4

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27

Quick announcement: Today’s Nix hour is in ~15 minutes (2023-11-16T17:00:00Z), but we’ll switch it up a bit this time:

  • The first 30 minutes won’t be recorded but I’ll hang out in the meeting, feel free to join, ask and chat however :slight_smile:
  • The second 30 minutes will be streamed/recorded here, and I’ll try to build a small lecture about some question that came up earlier during that

Let’s see how it goes!

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28

Great lesson on git bisect! :slight_smile: good learning in here. Many thanks

1 Like
29

We’re going to try out something different for tomorrow’s Nix Hour at 2023-11-30T17:00:00Z: We pick a topic beforehand and will then focus on that single topic for the entire episode.

This time, we’re going to talk about writing NixOS modules! If you have any questions about this topic, you can either:

And as always, it will be streamed to YouTube here if you just want to listen in.

If this new format of picking the topic beforehand and focusing on that works well, we intend to keep doing this going forward. If you have any feedback, feel free to give it here or on Matrix! And if you want to suggest another potential topic for a future Nix Hour, open a new issue!

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30

A beginner guide in general would be pretty cool! Working with Nix internals too would be cool, get into the weeds of things ig :3

31

The next Nix Hour is 2023-12-14T17:00:00Z, and we’ll talk about Debugging Nix code!

If you have any questions about this topic, you can either:

And as always, it will be streamed to YouTube here if you just want to listen in.

Updates

Holiday Break

We’ll have a 2 weeks break after this week, so the following Nix hour will be in January, Happy Holidays! :christmas_tree:

New schedule

We’re changing the day and time of the Nix hour every month going forward. But instead of making a poll every time like we did previously, we’re just going to pick pseudo-random times. This will hopefully allow people with other availabilities to join more often.

Following Nix Hour

For January we picked 15:00 CET on Fridays! This means that the following Nix Hour after this week will be on 2024-01-05T14:00:00Z and repeat for 4 weeks until a new time is announced for February!

Weekly topic

The weekly topic will continue to be selected in advance from the list of open nix-hour repository issues. So if you want to suggest a topic, :+1: existing issues or write your own!

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32

Thanks @Infinisil https://github.com/tweag/nix-hour/tree/master/templates/vm seems incredibly useful; sorry about the trouble with freezing half way through :slight_smile:

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33

The next Nix Hour is 2024-01-05T14:00:00Z, where we’ll talk about Impure runtime dependencies! If you have any questions about this topic, you can either:

If you just want to listen in, you can watch the livestream here :slight_smile:

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34

Starting now, but we need to use a new meeting link: Jitsi Meet

Edit: We will use this meeting link from now on!

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35

The next Nix Hour is 2024-01-26T14:00:00Z, and we’ll talk about Compiling packages from source!

If you have any questions about this topic, you can either:

Updates

Only live stream, no more Jitsi meeting

Unfortunately we’re retiring the Jitsi meetings for now. They’re causing too many problems and don’t encourage a lot of interaction. Instead, watch the stream live on YouTube and use the live chat to ask questions about the session and interact with others.

In the future we also hope to have an alternative to YouTube, see here for updates regarding that.

Day and time in February

The Nix Hour gets a new day and time every month in order to allow people with different abilities to watch it live.

For February, the Nix Hour will be 16:00 CET on Wednesdays! So the following Nix Hour after this week will be on 2024-02-07T15:00:00Z and repeat for 4 weeks until a new time is announced for March.

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The next Nix Hour is 2024-02-07T15:00:00Z, where we’ll continue with part 2 of Advent of Code Day 1! Watch the stream and use the live chat for any questions :slight_smile:

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37

The next Nix Hour is on 2024-02-28T15:00:00Z, and we’ll talk about various experimental features!

If you have any questions about this topic, you can either:

Day and time in March

The Nix Hour gets a new day and time every month in order to allow people with different abilities to watch it live.

For March, the Nix Hour will be 18:00 CET on Tuesdays! So the following Nix Hour after this week will be on 2024-03-05T17:00:00Z and repeat for 4 weeks until a new time is announced for March.

You can also see the times in the NixOS calendar.

38

The next Nix hour is spontaneously being hosted at an in-person meetup in Zürich! That’s because purely by coincidence, a new Nix Zürich user group meetup was just scheduled for the exact same time.

Since we’ll have a in-person audience, we’ll keep the topic more free-form this time for various questions. But as always, if you have a suggestion for a topic, feel free to open an issue.

Thanks to @mrcjk from tiko Energy Solutions for the location and @ners for the organisation!

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39

Quick update: I’m getting a bit sick, so I’ll cancel this week’s Nix Hour. The event in Zürich is still happening though, just without me :slight_smile:

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40

The next Nix Hour is on 2024-03-26T17:00:00Z, and we’ll talk about setting up language tooling for projects!

If you have any questions about this topic, you can either:

Day and time in April

The Nix Hour gets a new day and time every month in order to allow people with different abilities to watch it live.

For April, the Nix Hour will be 17:00 CEST on Fridays (keep in mind the switch to summer time)! We’ll also skip the first week because @YorikSar is on vacation. So the following Nix Hour after this week will be on 2024-04-12T15:00:00Z and repeat for 3 weeks until a new time is announced for May.

You can also see the times in the NixOS calendar.

3 Likes