What I was complaining about was the difficulty installing a specific package version. That's trivial with other build systems, but not Nix.
> I don't use [package managers] to install dev dependencies.
I'm under the impression that most people do. Either way, I see the main advantage of using Nix to be setting up dev environments without installing a bunch of global packages, or dealing with a mess of files. Unfortunately, as a user, I find it to be much more of a hassle than it needs to be.
When quoting me, you changed my wording to suit your own argument, which seems to imply you get my point but are choosing to ignore it. (You swapped out "Apt", my distribution package manager, for "[package managers]", which would include both distro and dev language package managers. The latter are for devs, the former for users)
It certainly reads like "it" was to mean "the aptitude package manager" to me.
If you like to use a separate package manager for libraries/etc. that is fine. That is not something I enjoy doing.
Using Debian, I would frequently install a build dependency, and forget I cluttered my install doing so, leaving a package I don't care about or remember to be updated, and possibly break future installs. I read about nix-shell, and have been using NixOS ever since.
NixOS has clear room for improvement, but, unfortunately, some of the devs are adamant that it cannot - worse: should not - be done.
> It certainly reads like "it" was to mean "the aptitude package manager" to me.
The aptitude package manager is the package manager for the Debian operating system. It is for managing packages that make your OS run. Unless you're defining multiple repo versions in your sources.list and using apt pinning, it typically gives you one version of the latest supported software. Other distro/OS package managers do the same. Even Homebrew for macOS deletes older versions and makes them inaccessible. NixOS' package manager does the same here. This is very typical. Portage is an exception.
Separately, Cabal is a package manager for development dependencies for the Haskell programming ecosystem. This is what you should use for setting up such a dev environment. It is specifically developed with this in mind.
Asking your OS package manager to additionally manage the ecosystem of every programming language you may want to develop in seems a bit out of scope, no?
> NixOS has clear room for improvement, but, unfortunately, some of the devs are adamant that it cannot - worse: should not - be done.
Your definition of "improvement" seems to be to handle use-cases it isn't intended for and for which there are specialised package managers, likely introducing huge complexity and spreading resources thin. This seems like something that could also be a disimprovement.
> Separately, Cabal is a package manager for development dependencies for the Haskell programming ecosystem.
And cargo/rustup, go for golang, pip for python, gem/bundle for ruby...
But they all tend to depend on parts of the Os - or their own c compile chain to compile their own version of c libs.
Which leads to the question of how you most easily write a tool in haskell that you can distribute as a deb package.
Saying that "for haskell, playing nice with Perl's ssl-dependencies is hard, so we won't bother" is one approach. It certainly is one way to use up additional resources provided by moore's law: no shared libraries, just thousands of copies of statically linked strlen-functions, in thousands of chroots. (also, hello there, docker).
Snapshots and isolation are great tools, but I don't think it's clear cut what's best yet. Especially when you want to ensure you're not running code with well-known vulnerabilities - be that in bash, ssl keygen, or mallloc.
> Asking your OS package manager to additionally manage the ecosystem of every programming language you may want to develop in seems a bit out of scope, no?
For apt? maybe. For Nix? no.
Nix doesn't install packages, it creates environments. NixOS considers one environment to be the main operating system. That is the main feature of Nix: self-contained reproducible environments.
Because it is so well suited to the task, nix provides all the packages provided by Hackage, sorted into separate namespaces for each supported version of GHC. Each namespace, however, supports only one package version per package; so any packages where it makes sense to provide multiple versions has loosely adopted the name_version naming scheme as a workaround.
Out of frustration, I searched for an answer why this is the case, and found an issue someone else had already discussed at length, only to find a dead end: the issue was discarded (not honestly considered). I then commented at length to explain my line of thinking, only to hear excuses for keeping the status quo, rather than actual help or discussion. The developers commenting on the issue were hung up on their preference for "pinning", and didn't want to consider the namespace mess I have such issue with.
It seems you share the same attitude that changes cannot be done - not because you are certain that is the case, but because you don't believe it should be. There is no reason behind this attitude, and I frankly have no patience for it.
If you want to discuss this problem and any related nuances, I am happy to do so. Please do not naively tell me that my perspective doesn't exist, or cannot make sense.
> It seems you share the same attitude that changes cannot be done - not because you are certain that is the case, but because you don't believe it should be. There is no reason behind this attitude, and I frankly have no patience for it.
I don't share this attitude in any objective sense. Changes can always be done. Whether they should is a pros-vs-cons consideration, many of which are subjective, and both conclusions are therefore valid.
I wasn't arguing that this should not be done, I was challenging the perspective that this should be expected. There's a difference between saying devs should follow the status quo, and asking devs to consider extending the scope of their project and adopt a new approach. And calling devs "elitist" for refusing to do the latter seems pretty rich.
As has been mentioned, Portage already does this, and it's a much older, more traditional package manager without the concept of setting up environments, so noone is questioning that this can be done.
> Please do not naively tell me that my perspective doesn't exist, or cannot make sense.
If your perspective is that it would be nice for Nix to support arbitrary package, that's great. If your perspective is that any dev who refuses to implement such a non-normative and complexity-increasing feature is elitist, then I don't believe your perspective makes sense.
Minor note: I do actually agree with zapita's original comment, so this lengthy thread underneath may seem like pedantry, but I just found it odd that you felt your example fit with zapita's point, as it seemed like the opposite to me.
What I was complaining about was the difficulty installing a specific package version. That's trivial with other build systems, but not Nix.
> I don't use [package managers] to install dev dependencies.
I'm under the impression that most people do. Either way, I see the main advantage of using Nix to be setting up dev environments without installing a bunch of global packages, or dealing with a mess of files. Unfortunately, as a user, I find it to be much more of a hassle than it needs to be.