nix icon indicating copy to clipboard operation
nix copied to clipboard

Published 20 hours ago • verified publisher icon NixOS

`nix profile` has bad UX

Open bobvanderlinden opened this issue 2 years ago • 13 comments

There are quite a few UX problems with nix profile. I'd like to document them to give some context:

  • [ ] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/7964
  • [ ] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/7965
  • [ ] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/10064
  • [ ] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/10077
  • [ ] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/9801
  • [ ] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/10098
  • [ ] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/9802
  • [ ] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/8704
  • [x] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/7487
  • [x] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/10162
  • [x] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/7962
  • [x] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/5587
  • [x] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/7530
  • [x] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/7960
  • [x] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/7961
  • [x] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/8678

I thought I'd gather them here in a single overarching issue, instead of listing the problems all here.

bobvanderlinden avatar Mar 04 '23 14:03 bobvanderlinden

3 of these issues can be resolved if we could refer to installed packages by name instead of by index:

  • [x] https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/7967

bobvanderlinden avatar Mar 04 '23 14:03 bobvanderlinden

Thanks a lot for listing all these. I think that will be incredibly useful for #7701

thufschmitt avatar Mar 04 '23 15:03 thufschmitt

I just got here and with all the documentation around it I still haven't been able to figure out what nix profile does and why I need it or how to use it.

Given how confusing a lot of the documentation is… maybe a full revamp is in order.

Update: I got it. nix profile is great, the documentation in CLI and on web are good and it's the simplest way really to install global packages.

alper avatar May 06 '23 09:05 alper

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/flakes-as-a-unified-format-for-profiles/29476/1

nixos-discourse avatar Jun 22 '23 07:06 nixos-discourse

#6481 was abandoned in favor of #8631; you may want to update the todo list :)

iFreilicht avatar Jul 09 '23 21:07 iFreilicht

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nix-flakes-is-an-experiment-that-did-too-much-at-once/32707/12

nixos-discourse avatar Oct 10 '23 05:10 nixos-discourse

Thanks for compiling the issues. I wanted to write a home-manager alternative ( https://github.com/viperML/activation-manager ), that relies on being installed as part of a buildEnv + nix profile install /flake#package-output. But I just faced all the bad UX of nix profile.

viperML avatar Dec 18 '23 10:12 viperML

@bobvanderlinden now that #8678 has been merged, could you re-evaluate whether which of these issues are resolved?

iFreilicht avatar Dec 21 '23 18:12 iFreilicht

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/2023-12-15-nix-team-meeting-minutes-112/38155/1

nixos-discourse avatar Jan 12 '24 08:01 nixos-discourse

Two more issues that might be worth adding here: https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/10463, https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/10419

iFreilicht avatar May 03 '24 07:05 iFreilicht

@iFreilicht I think they can both be considered duplicates. I've commented in the issues.

bobvanderlinden avatar May 13 '24 18:05 bobvanderlinden