The rule, which had been delayed for >1 yr as industry groups have threatened lawsuits, is less robust than #WallStreet#regulator’s original #climate disclosure plan, which would have forced public companies to account for not just their own #emissions, but also those throughout their #SupplyChains. But it still represents 1 of the most far-reaching measures by the #federal#government to push companies toward climate #accountability….
The rule is one of the most highly anticipated in the #SEC’s history, generating some 24k comments from #business, #trade grps, investors & #climate#activists.
“This is going to impact a lot of different companies. People will be able to track them based on what they are required to report, not just the co’s own #spin on data. You will …be able to see which companies are doing a better job at dealing w/ #ClimateChange,” said Doug Chia, Rutgers Ctr for #Corporate#Law & #Governance fellow.
Distro agnostic packages like flatpaks and appimages have become extremely popular over the past few years, yet they seem to get a lot of dirt thrown on them because they are super bloated (since they bring all their dependencies with them)....
I often stumble on this example of nix usage - a one-off shell with a a specific package. This is such a niche and seemingly unimportant use case, that it’s really strange to have it mentioned so often.
It’s probably one of the simplest things you can do with it that isn’t really possible with other package managers and also doesn’t require explaining any internals, I guess that’s why.
I could also tell you about easily being able to build statically linked binaries or cross-compile (or both) with the same package definition without having to do any extra work, that might be more impressive.
The other use case that is often brought up is for managing dev environments, but for a lot of popular languages (Python, Node, Java, Rust, etc. ) there are proven environment management options already (pyenv and poetry, nvm, jenv, rustup).
Yeah, and neither of them considered that it might be important to deal with software written in other languages. Want to link against a C library in a Rust project? Run some tool as part of NPM build step? Screw you, install it manually from elsewhere or your build fails. The only one that I know does do this is OCaml’s OPAM, which does have a lot of non-OCaml software packaged. (Also at least the latter three seem to be only for setting up the language itself. What is this, a package manager for a single package?)
Not to mention Docker.
Meh, Docker is kind of a joke. Sure, it solves the problem of dependencies, but in possibly the stupidest way possible bar shipping a VirtualBox image. A lot of prebuilt images are x86_64 only. It needs to run a Linux VM on Mac and Windows (tbf Nix doesn’t have a native Windows version at the moment either, you need to run it in WSL, but people are working on that). So that means running at native performance on an ARM Mac, which are quite common for development I think, is out from the start. It also adds a lot of complexity to your environment due to wrapping everything in a container if you just want to have a couple tools. You don’t get your nicely configured shell, other system tools, anything else inside the container. I haven’t ever tried it but you probably also need special support from any IDE you want to use.
(And not to mention most Dockerfiles being absolutely not reproducible, but you can solve that… with Nix :^) )
GUI app shortcuts work in neither of the OSs
On Linux I think you need to link ~/.local/share/applications to home-manager’s share/applications. Not sure about Mac, its GUI kind of hates symlinks and Nix uses a lot of symlinks. Spotlight doesn’t read anything behind symlinks at all, for example, and Launchpad resolves them so after a package update it will not pick up the new versions because it’s still looking at the old path.
error messages are about as readable as the ones you get for C++ templates
Unfortunately true, yeah. I also think this isn’t really a problem that can be solved due to Nix being a dynamically typed language that has everything be an expression (so there’s no fixed structure whatsoever) and also using lazy evaluation everywhere. Three components that all decrease the capability for useful error messages and debugging, and together… yeah it can get pretty bad.
a lot of troubleshooting searches to unsolved GitHub issues
Really? This hasn’t been my experience at all. There’s a couple like that, sure, like the build sandbox on Mac, but they’re rare. And usually people in the community channel know a workaround :^)
As you can see from the state of this thread, people see nix or nixpkgs but read nixos. There’s no momentum from the community to push it as an extra package manager, while every thread is spammed with nixos.
No gui integrations for casuals. For example Discover integrates flatpaks and snaps, but for nix you need to use the terminal.
The documentation is abysmal. I spent days trying to figure out how to use nix as a declarative package manager before I accidentally came across home-manager. Even the manual leads you down the wrong path. A quick start guide with a few examples for home-manager and flakes, and a few basic commands, would’ve had me going in 5 minutes. That problem is made worse by the fact that almost all sources of info focus on nixos instead.
Edit:
if anyone’s interested in trying it out, here’s a part of my other comment in this thread
It’s just a list of packages, and an optional flake to control the repositories (stable/unstable) and add packages from outside of the official ones.
To update everything nix related I just run:
cd ~/dotfiles/nix/ && nix flake update && home-manager switch
The #SEC just approved the merger. Read where the money for #TruthSocial came, or is coming, from.
...To facilitate becoming a publicly traded company, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) was created with the help of ARC Capital, a Shanghai-based firm specializing in listing Chinese companies on American stock markets that has been a target of SEC investigations for misrepresenting shell corporations...
Feb 15: Fucking #unbelievable. #SEC allowing a company owned in majority by Donald #Trump to be publicly traded.
...Trump, who will hold a stake of about 58% in the newly formed company.
DWAC shares soared nearly 30% on Thurs morning, and were last trading up 20% at $52.16, having touched a session high of $56.30. Digital World said it expected to announce the date of a special meeting of its stockholders to vote on the approval of the merger within two business days
I’d nowadays be able to solve that particular problem with one line of relatively simple code in NixOS
I can’t remember the exact details of the whole issue, but that part was for a desktop entry. If I remember correctly, in the end I had to create a system service and there were no readily available examples like for the packages. After days of researching in my spare time, I had to ask in the irc for a snippet from someone’s config.
As the person who implemented a variant of this for Nix (buildFHSEnv), it’s rather straight-forward.
Oh, it seems really cool. I’ll need to look into it.
I mean, that’s just one particular interface. It’s actually quite flexible to do it this way though as it allows you to dumb it down if you don’t like it with a little refactor:
That’s definitely an improvement, but the default config is still far better IMO.
I probably wouldn’t bother with doing that stuff in Nix and would rather just keep the plain i3config text file and set the option glue to just use that file; effectively a glorified stow.
Replacing stow with home-manager has the same issues as replacing a regular distro with nixos. If I can stow all of my dotfiles, why would I use home-manager to handle them instead? In most cases it’s just going to be harder to configure anything, and you also need to rebuild your home every time you want to update a config.
This more complex interface is only truly beneficial if there are parts of your config that vary depending on some other conditions. Some users may have the need to only run a set of commands or have certain launch options on one machine but not another. Trivial to do with lib.optionals and the like using this kind of interface but very hard to do if it was just a list of strings or one large string.
What benefits does it have over just using a shell script?
I guess it’s also great for programs that aren’t following the standards like firefox.
Well, then tell it to not to do that? I don’t know the module in question but any well-designed module has an option for precisely that. If it doesn’t, I’d consider that a bug.
It’s probably a skill issue, but that ties into another problem I’ve had when messing around with home-manager: the only source of options I found was mynixos. So to configure anything I had to first guess potential keywords to search for the option I’m interested in. And that’s after learning about it from some video on youtube, because google left me high and dry.
I wholeheartedly disagree. Declarative stateless system configuration a la Nix solves a lot of issues that users face all the time.
Can you give me some examples, what issues will I face running MX + nix that I wouldn’t if I ran nixos?
As someone who works with terraform, I understand the benefits of being forced to keep a single source of truth instead of remembering to update my post-installation script and keep things synced across devices. But on the other hand this is everything I need to do to get a fresh install to where I’m currently at:
install the single docker dependency that doesn’t work with home-manager
clone my dotfiles and symlink them
set up nix, home-manager, and switch
remove the few packages I’ve replaced with nix ones
cp the i3.desktop (home-manager and sddm were not agreeing)
clone and install doom
It’s definitely not a lot to maintain, and the issues are either obvious and easy to solve, or just a small waste of space. For example if I forget to remove the debian version of git, it’s still going to automatically source the nix one first. Home-manager with just a list of packages makes the hardest part of that process a breeze, while still being really easy to set up.
The main problem was getting started from 0, so I’m considering writing a post about it when I get a bit more comfortable. Trying to learn nix declarative package management from the nix manual is a bad idea, and almost all of the resources are on nixos. A quickstart guide with a few commands and examples would’ve had me up and running in 10 minutes instead of days.
Whether the time investment is worth it at present is debatable but there’s a clear path towards yes IMO because a project focused around proper IaC elevates operating systems onto another level because it abstracts and centralises configuration. It takes one person to figure out how to configure a certain thing in a sensible way and they can publish that work as a NixOS module for everyone’s benefit. Most of the work I put into NixOS is upstream because of this.
Right now, it’s absolutely catered towards nerds and other technologically able people like us but imagine what a further abstracted GUI could do for mere mortals.
Oh for sure, a home-manager gui that let’s you customize every package from a single place while automatically updating your config would be a complete game changer. But I’m talking about the current state of things. In that regard, currently every linux user can enjoy simple declarative package management with stable and bleeding edge sources. Yet I never see it mentioned, while even beginner threads are being spammed with nixos recommendations. Imagine if casuals could open their software center or discover and install nix packages instead of flatpaks.
If I can stow all of my dotfiles, why would I use home-manager to handle them instead? In most cases it’s just going to be harder to configure anything, and you also need to rebuild your home every time you want to update a config.
Yes, yes indeed. That’s why my dotfiles are still in a git repo (don’t get the point of stow), not in home-manager.
If you do in fact need home-manager’s features for some of your dotfiles though, it can effectively act as a stow superset for the rest.
What benefits does it have over just using a shell script?
Declarative stateless configuration rather than imperative stateful configuration.
With a bash script, you’d have to meticulously craft together the i3config file using shell script syntax and remember to run that every time you change something. home-manager just does all of that for you with high-level data types and frameworks specifically made for that purpose.
that ties into another problem I’ve had when messing around with home-manager: the only source of options I found was mynixos. So to configure anything I had to first guess potential keywords to search for the option I’m interested in.
Can you give me some examples, what issues will I face running MX + nix that I wouldn’t if I ran nixos?
All the issues which declarative immutable stateless system configuration solves such as atomic updates, configuration rollback in case you messed something up and trivial recovery. I’m sure I’m forgetting some since I’m so used to having them.
The main problem was getting started from 0, so I’m considering writing a post about it when I get a bit more comfortable. Trying to learn nix declarative package management from the nix manual is a bad idea, and almost all of the resources are on nixos. A quickstart guide with a few commands and examples would’ve had me up and running in 10 minutes instead of days.
Yeah, docs are a pain point. If you think that section is bad (I think so too), everyone will thank you for rewriting it. Feel free to shoot a PR to Nixpkgs and ping a few people from the docs team if you’re motivated.
Yet I never see it mentioned, while even beginner threads are being spammed with nixos recommendations.
I don’t get it either. NixOS is the best thing since sliced bread for a certain kind of person (experienced hacker who has felt the pain points which NixOS relieves) but I’d never recommend it to an inexperienced user in its current state.
"A judge has ordered Elon Musk to testify as part of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, now called X, in 2022"
"The #SEC has dropped a requirement for U.S.-listed companies to disclose so-called Scope 3 #emissions, which was included in its original draft of the rules published in March 2022, the sources said."
"If adopted, the new draft would represent a win for many corporations and their trade groups that lobbied to water down the rules. But it would also deviate from European Union rules which make Scope 3 disclosures mandatory for large companies starting this year and potentially complicate compliance for some global corporations."
Why aren't more people using NixPKGs?
Distro agnostic packages like flatpaks and appimages have become extremely popular over the past few years, yet they seem to get a lot of dirt thrown on them because they are super bloated (since they bring all their dependencies with them)....
Nix/Silverblue users: How big is the advantage if you already have 100% automated your deployments via Ansible?
There is a similar question on the site which must not be named....