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Nix Installer Agenda 01/04/23

  • Planning for 0.0.1 of nix-installer on Jan 16ish
  • /usr/bin/nix symlinking discussion
    • Maybe risk some surprising problems because the .profile script editing sets some environment variables
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Ana Hobden
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Stability notes

Every Nix user has Nix installed, either through using NixOS or by having installed it on their preferred OS. ((Cole: preceding sentence seems weird IMO; doesn't really add anything -- "of course nix users have nix installed, otherwise they wouldn't be a nix user")) Today, users install Nix through a set of shell scripts which work across a variety of MacOS versions and Linux distributions. ((Cole: it sounds to me like the above paragraph should be something like "If you are interested in using Nix, but don't want to make the jump to a full-blown Nix-managed operating system like NixOS, you will have to install it somehow. The most common way of doing that today is through a set of shell scripts................" or something)) The maintenance of these scripts can be frustrating and error-prone. Differences in support and behavior between these disparate systems can mean even small changes can require considerable effort, ((Cole: preceding , -> ;)) worse, it can mean some features simply never happen. A few months ago, several members of the community began discussing if it would be possible to improve both developer and user experience by replacing the current Polymorphic Bash scripts with something new. Graham, a Determinate Systems founder ((Cole: I can't really explain how or how to improve it, but the "a founder" just feels weird to me)) who played a big part in the creation of the current scripts, suggested we experiment with writing an installer in Rust. We're happy to say this experiment has been quite successful and we're pleased with the results so far. At Determinate Systems ((Cole: , after the link)) we're already using it in our internal infrastructure. We already ((Cole: already said "already" in the previous sentence, maybe just s/already//)) teased it in our Nix on the Steam Deck ((Cole: nit, move "our" outside of the link)) post, but today we're going to talk about it in depth.

Jan 11, 2023
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