Comment on Another reason to love Linux

• PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Hold up, nix added containerization? How did I miss that? I will have another look now!

  Nix is containerization.

  [hap@glimmer:/proc/69235/fd]$ python --version
  Python 3.12.8
  
  [hap@glimmer:/proc/69235/fd]$ nix-shell -p python39
  this path will be fetched (27.46 MiB download, 80.28 MiB unpacked):
    /nix/store/jrq27pp6plnpx0iyvr04f4apghwc57sz-python3-3.9.21
  copying path '/nix/store/jrq27pp6plnpx0iyvr04f4apghwc57sz-python3-3.9.21' from 'https://cache.nixos.org/'...
  
  [nix-shell:~]$ python --version
  Python 3.9.21
  
  [nix-shell:~]$ exit
  exit
  
  [hap@glimmer:/proc/69235/fd]$ python --version
  Python 3.12.8
  

  The whole “system” you get when moving from Nix to NixOS is basically just a composition of a whole bunch of those individual things, in one big container that is “the system.” But you can also fire up temporary containers trivially for particular things. I have a couple of tools with source in ~/src which, whenever I change the source, nix-os rebuild will automatically fire up a little container to rebuild them in, and if it works, it’ll deploy the completed product into my main system image for me, but if it doesn’t then nothing will have changed (and either way it throws away the container it used to attempt the build in).

  Each config change spawns a new container for the main system OS image (“generation”), but you can roll back to one of the earlier generations (which are, from a functional perspective, still around) if you want or if you broke something.

  And so on. It’s very nice.

  source

  • Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Aw, meh. From what I saw it’s more like a jail, there’s no imaging the containers

    source

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Yes because that is a wrong and clunky way to do it lol.

      If you really wanted to, you could use dockerTools.BuildImage to create an “imaged” version of the container you made, or you could send around the flake.nix and flake.lock files exactly as someone would send around Dockerfiles. That stuff is usually just not necessary though, because it’s replaced with just a better approach (for the average-end-user case where you don’t need large numbers of Docker containers that you can deploy quickly at scale) that accomplishes the same thing.

      I feel like I’m not going to convince you of this though. Have fun with Docker, I guess.

      source

      • Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        The issue is, nix builds are only guaranteed to be reproducible if the dependencies don’t change. Which they shouldn’t, but you can’t trust the internet to be consistent. Things won’t be there to be fetched forever.

        Images do. And you can turn one into a container in seconds. I suppose it’s a matter of preference. I like one a package to be independent

        source

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