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NixOS
codify terminology
we observe confusion around terminology.
- newcomers find it hard to distinguish all the things that are called Nix
- Nix is a very generic term that is hard to search for online
this proposal is to introduce just enough structure to clearly distinguish concepts, and give names that are not wrong, without invalidating existing material. therefore it is strictly oriented around existing conventions.
it is not intended as an attempt to radically rename ecosystem components, even if that may be desirable for better readability and discoverability.
closes https://github.com/NixOS/nix.dev/issues/275
This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/should-we-give-a-name-to-nix-on-non-nixos/21020/7
Is it necessary to prefix every item with nix? At some point, it may be worth thinking about renaming some parts.
Even reading it, it's still confusing because it's mostly "nix [something]".
If I compare with Gentoo (the OS) built with Portage (the building tool / package manager) from ebuilds (packages definition), you don't mix anything.
But in this case, NixOS is built with Nix by running the nix cli on a nix file, it supports everything from the nixos modules collection and the nix packages collection.
@rapenne-s I agree, but I strongly doubt we can pull of a large renaming without doing a lot of damage. This proposal is to provide just enough structure to make sense of things, in a backwards compatible way, even if it all sounds redundant.
This pull request has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/tweag-nix-dev-update-35/21701/1
@edolstra @domenkozar @Mic92 @infinisil There seem to be no more objections, therefore I would merge this end of next week.