Comment on Another reason to love Linux

• PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The issue is, nix builds are only guaranteed to be reproducible if the dependencies don’t change.

  Dude, this is exactly why Nix is better. Docker builds are only guaranteed to be reproducible if the dependencies don’t change. Which they will. The vast majority of real-world Dockerfiles do pip install, wget, all kinds of basically unlimited nonsense to pull down their dependencies from anywhere on the internet.

  Nix builds, on the other hand, are forbidden from the internet, specifically to force them to declare dependencies explicitly and have it within a managed system. You can trust that the Nix repositories aren’t going to change (or store them yourself, along with all the source that generated them and will actually produce the same binaries), if you’re paranoid. You can send the nix.flake and nix.lock files and it will actually work to reproduce a basically byte-identical container on the receiver’s end, which means you don’t have to send multi-gigabyte “images” in order to be able to depend on the recipient actually being able to make use of it. This is what I was saying that the whole thing of needing “images” is a non-issue if your workflow isn’t allowing arbitrary fuckery on an industrial scale.

  I like one a package to be independent

  Yes, me too, which is why an affinity for Docker is weird to me.

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  • Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    you can trust the nix repositories aren’t going to change

    That, I do not. And storing the source and such for every dependency would be bigger than, and result in the same thing as an image.

    I think you’re trying to achieve something different than what docker is for. Docker is like installing onto an empty computer then shipping the entire machine to the end user. You pretty much guarantee thing will work. (yes this is oversimplified)

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    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      And storing the source and such for every dependency would be bigger than, and result in the same thing as an image.

      Let’s flip that around.

      The insanity that would be downloading and storing everything you need, wrapping it all up into a massive tarball and then shipping it to anyone who wants to use the end product, and also by the way assuming that everything you need in order to rebuild it will always be available from every upstream source if you want to make any changes, is precisely what Docker does. And yes, it’s silly to trust that everything it’s referencing will always be available from whoever’s providing it.

      (Also, security)

      Docker is like installing onto an empty computer then shipping the entire machine to the end user.

      Correct. Because it’s not capable enough to make actually-reproducible builds.

      My point is, you can do that (in a couple of different ways) imaging with Nix, if you really wanted to. No one does, because it would be insane when you have other more effective tools that can accomplish the exact same goal without needing to ship the entire machine to the end user.

      I’ve been tempted into a “my favorite technology is better” pissing match, I guess. Anyway, Nix is better.

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      • Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I might just start bundling my apps inside an environment setup with nix inside docker. A lot of them are similar to identical, So those docker images actually share a lot of layers under the hood.

        My apps after compiling and packaging are usually around 50mb. That’s 48mb of debian, which is entirely shared between all the images that I build. So the eventual size of my deployed applications isn’t nearly as big as they seem from the size of the tarball being sent around. So for 10 apps, that’s not 500mb, that’s 68mb.

        If anything, the docker hub and registry are a bit of a mess.

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