Readit Newsronef commented on The Pain That Is GitHub Actions feldera.com/blog/the-pain... · Posted by u/qianli_cs
I've run into similar pain points with GitHub Actions in past roles but I still very much use them/get value. One approach that's helped us at Flox is indeed using Nix and we've now seen customers start leveraging that. Significant drop in “works on my machine” issues and more reliable CI pipelines, etc... It’s not a silver bullet, but it offers a solid technical foundation for tackling these challenges.
On the Flox side we are very much on the integrate and improve rather than full replace for scenarios like this one <3
Happy to answer any Nix items on this!
To add on to this, more than just useful, incredible team building it!
ronef commented on Nix and Containers: Why Not Both? flox.dev/blog/nix-and-con... · Posted by u/Areibman
Awesome to see this on here! We've seen a lot of comments talk about Nix versus other tools recently and wanted to share some of our thoughts on it. We like seeing Nix meet developers where they are, integrating into our existing workflows, including containerized ones.
ronef commented on Flox, a better alternative to Dev Containers medium.com/@pierre_49652/... · Posted by u/pierrebeucher
I am curious how the company behind Flox intends to make money, I hope they intend to make money on consulting or operate non-profit sponsored by some institutions.
Hey from Berlin! I'm Ron one of the founders at Flox and also board member of the NixOS Foundation. Just noticed folks are talking here and that's super exciting! We are all in the midst of the yearly NixCon so apologies if I'm slow to respond or my answers are a bit shorter. Definitely happy to dig deeper!
I saw your question and actually wanted to share the response I shared a few months ago, happy to unpack or talk about any of it as well.
This is from our original 1.0 announcement here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39692801) -> bringing forward what you saw today for free and open source, was a major part of why I started Flox, with much more to come into it. What we released today will be free forever (both the open source client and the FloxHub services for sharing environments). We plan on expanding the offering to include a more robust private software catalogs that layers on top of the OOTB Flox Catalog that ships with Flox. If you are interested in publishing your output or need revised versions of open source packages in Flox then it'll be very easy to have your own catalog to compliment the always-free Flox Catalog that Flox ships with today. Beyond that, we are focused on a number of services that help bring Nix's build to the enterprise. Over time we intend to sell a solution to enterprises - through subscriptions and services - so they can more effectively manage expansive and fragmented software supply chains. As part of developing custom tooling for enterprises, we think it's reasonable for them to participate in funding for that work.
Nix sounds cool. Nowadays when I dev my research, I usually use docker so that I can move my "machine" to any server in my lab. Not sure how I should fit Nix into my workflow.
There's a bunch of tutorials out there now, but what's the main case you're trying to solve for? Just an easy dev environment?
There's an ecosystem out there that ease up the entry for Nix and also nix.dev does a great job as part of documentation efforts inside of the community.
was wondering when this guy would drop a video on nix. pleasantly surprised by the result, although i do find it funny that he had to go well over the usual 100 seconds. that's nix for you.
one benefit that doesn't get much lipservice in elevator pitches for nix, here included, is the experience of packaging. i think the average line count in my personal collection of obscure software is ~30, and that's including license/homepage metadata and other such junk -- it can make even bsd portfiles look tubby by comparison.
As a Nix foundation person - If anyone gets a 100 second pitch for Nix, dinners on me and I'm using it in the Nix marketing efforts :D
Agreed on the packaging experience for nix. We've been talking about that for a while also on the Flox side when we're working with folks.