[Nix-dev] Usability: Nixpkg > NixOS

[Judson Lester]

Candidly, my experience working with nix expressions so far has not been
confusion about the language.

Two important points are are weakly documented and (to me) mysterious:

First, how derivations become software. I *think* nix-env (or nix-shell, or
nix-repl) takes the derivation, finds the build script, establishes
environment variables and runs the script, but I don't know that I've ever
seen that in print anywhere. More nuanced, I've never quite been sure where
the appropriate dividing line is between derivation and build script - in
theory, you could do all your string processing in one or the other, or
violate Nixpkgs constraints in the build script, but in there's a big
middle ground I sometimes have a hard time navigating.

Second, how do builds get linked into the system? I've seen it happen, and
again I have suspicions that it has to do with the outputs attribute of the
derivation, but I remain in the spooky darkness about particulars.

Judson

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 3:08 PM Profpatsch <mail at profpatsch.de> wrote:

> On 16-12-15 02:21pm, Colin Putney wrote:
> > Perhaps if we promote the language more, people will get over that hurdle
> > early and then be pleasantly surprised when they see what's possible with
> > it.
>
> see also: https://nixcloud.io/tour/
>
>
> --
> Proudly written in Mutt with Vim on NixOS.
> Q: Why is this email five sentences or less?
> A: http://five.sentenc.es
> May take up to five days to read your message. If it’s urgent, call me.
> _______________________________________________
> nix-dev mailing list
> nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.science.uu.nl/pipermail/nix-dev/attachments/20161215/cb627e31/attachment.html>