Where did you get stuck in the Nix ecosystem? Tell me your story

[doronbehar]

@nessdoor

Then I came to the conclusion that a declarative build is cool, but with too much overhead to manage

Yes, because we lack any sort of tooling that actually eases writing Nix, […]

I agree that the docs could be improved, but I don’t think that it will ever reach a point where it will be easier to manage Nix system in comparison to a regular distribution, because you are managing something much more complex, but with features that worth the efforts.

@nessdoor

So, where is our strength? What is it that we do better than our competitors? How do we march on to become the declarative package manager/distro of the future? Is there any exclusive functionality inherent to the way Nix handles things on which we can capitalize?

I am sure you are aware of these strengths (see also this thread). My point is that NixOS strengths come with a price, and if you are not ready to pay the price because you don’t appreciate the product, that’s OK :), that’s why it’s a niche system.

@nessdoor

Nix as a language is kind of ugly, don’t you all think?

Maybe Python is less ugly, but have you ever read Guix’ packages’ source code? Nix is much easier to understand then Guile.