For those of us using Nixpkgs master beware that the staging-next branch is scheduled to be merged into the master branch on October 30th.
The staging branches often contain major changes; In my experience, they destabilze the master branch.
I use the Nixpkgs master branch. The strategy I've been using for years is to update Nixpkgs prior to the staging branch merge, and then hold off until the stable release "branch off", which is on November 14th. After that the master branch should be in a good state.
#nixos
If you consider Chrome-based browsers independently, then you've only just scratched the surface :)
After such a downer regarding Bisq 1 on NixOS, I want to mention something positive.
I started a new Nix flake to bring amazing support for Squeak, Cuis, and Pharo Smalltalk to NixOS.
By amazing, I mean a level of seemlessness that is unmatched by any other operating system. The idea is to provide tooling and bundles to make it mind-blowingly easy to install and use different Smalltalk implementations and images, all at the same time.
For example, if you have a Smalltalk image, you can open it right from your file browser:
Right now I only have a "bundle" for Cuis 7, but soon it will be possible to install various versions of Cuis, Squeak, and Pharo Smalltalk, all at the same time without conflicts.
You can also launch a "bundle" using an app launcher or menu, which will then produce this Zenity prompt:
Creating a new Smalltalk image is damn fast because the image is already in the Nix store. Just choose a directory, or create a new one, and before you can blink your eyes the Smalltalk image will appear before you, executing with an appropriate Smalltalk virtual machine, ready to go.
Gone are the days of fumbling around, downloaded VMs and images, extracting them, .... boring.
Well, that's the idea. The project is still in it's infancy, but you can play with it here: https://github.com/emmanuelrosa/smalltalk-nix
If you have the Nix package manager, and Nix flakes enabled, you can just do this: nix run github:emmanuelrosa/smalltalk-nix#cuis-7_0
Before you know it, you'll have Cuis Smalltalk 7.0 right in front of you.
#nixos #nix #smalltalk
I recently mentioned that Bisq 1 is now marked as broken on Nixpkgs because OpenJDK 11 was removed.
I came up with a solution to get us by until Bisq 2 is feature-complete. The basic idea is this:
1. Create a NixOS-friendly AppImage of Bisq 1.
2. Keep a copy of the AppImage in a safe place.
3. Either use the AppImage, or use a bisq-desktop package with a pinned Nixpkgs, so that you can still access OpenJDK 11.
All of the above can be done with the Nix flake https://github.com/emmanuelrosa/bisq-for-nixos
Note: It's very likely that NixOS users using Bisq will soon discover that it can't be built anymore. Since NixOS doesn't track its users (how dare they!), this build failure is actually the best method we have to communiate that action needs to be taken. I've been emailed in the past by people using Bisq on NixOS, so I'm sure I'll here from them soon :)
I plan to remove the Bisq 1 package from Nixpkgs after the November stable release. I did not expect to have to do this so soon, but here we are.
#nixos #nix #bisq
