Back on Nix

2024-04-02

Back on Nix

I’m back on nix. Guix / guile felt nice, here is why i’m back:

• I’m really missing a practical reproducible OS, kept having issues with dependencies of my personal channel. This is something trivial when using Nix flakes. With Guix channels being a local configuration, and having to hack it to get it to work the way I would want to, this process of “dependencies of my dependencies” is much harder to fix.
• Packaging hell: I wanted to package one of the rust tool I use, I cant easily point to a specific version without packaging every dependencies of that rust package. Guix is missing a way to easily package different versions of libraries, and we are always at one commit away from breaking a package.
• I was still using nix for everything Guix does not fix or cover.
• Spending time on my config instead of coding real stuff.
• Need a different setup for work

For all these reasons, I got tired of Guix, even if I want to like it, it’s not meant for me.

Note to my future self: Before going back to Guix (next year?), remember this series.

Nix makes things work for me today, Nix flake keeps it working forever.