[Nix-dev] Doc feedback: the very first steps

[Michael Raskin]

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Ville Oikarinen wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> First, thank you for a very inspiring bunch of ideas and implementations,
> I really hope nix will work for me, to help fight against the constant
> software rot around us. (Configuration file rot is another problem, but I
> don't think even nix addresses that or does it?)

For trivial configurations you can hope that NixOS maintainers will
update generate dconfiguration files without changing the system
configuration.nix option names.

> I downloaded the latest stable nix source package, 0.21, and tried to get 
> going. But things are not quite straightforward:

Two problems so far: you meant 0.12 and it is very risky to use stable.
Nix seems to have bad "release karma": once release is done from
seemingly stable state, some relatively fresh bug surfaces. So it is
assumed that everybody uses SVN head. Problems with SVN head are very
rare.. They more or less coincide with release time.

> First, the docs state that --prefix=/nix is the default, but it seems it's
> /usr/local. At least make install (as a normal user!) tried to create
> /usr/local/libexec or something and failed.
> 
> (I had created /nix and chowned it to my normal user.)
> 
> Then I started over with ./configure --prefix=/nix, and this time both
> make and make install worked.

Docs assume SVN version..

> Next I found the order things are mentioned in the documentation a bit
> confusing: only the quick start told to add a channel, and the "actual"  
> body of the manual just says "Assuming that you have downloaded and
> unpacked a release of Nix Packages..." and other hand-waving like that.

Well, it is not exactly handwaving: manual is mostly about building from
source using Nix.

> Is there a reason the quick start tells to use an unstable channel?  

Because "stable" Nixpkgs are in even worse shape than "stable" Nix.

> Anyway, I decided to play it safe and tried to add a stable channel:
>
> nix-channel --add ...../nixpkgs-stable
> 
> But nix-channel isn't in the PATH, even though I had sourced 
> /nix/etc/profile.d/nix.sh

/nix/etc/profile.d/nix.sh etc list only paths in /nix/store (that are
subject to frequent change). It is supposed that you do what you like
with /nix/bin. It will be obsolete (for you) soon, anyway, as the
simplest way to update Nix is by installing Nix from NixPkgs

> Ok, I used the full path, /nix/bin/nix-channel and managed to add the
> channel.
> 
> Next I tried /nix/bin/nix-env -i hello but couldn't connect to
> nix.cs.uu.nl to download linux-headers.
>
> Is this a temporary failure? Are there any mirrors I should use?

nixos.org is the new site. "Stable" release may be older than change of
the server.


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