macOS Nix setup: an alternative to Homebrew (2020)

Re:macOS Nix setup: an alternative to Homebrew (2020) by FullyFunctional on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @04:37PM (#27825990)

Indeed, as a newcomer to Nix I was immediately put off by the arcaness of everything. I don't want my first experience to be memorized obscure paths and funky command line arguments (such may justified _later_ when more advanced options are wanted). I'm glad it works for people and I gather nix-env is a step in the right direction, but it's IMO not quite there yet.

EDIT: example, why is it

    nix-env -qaP git

instead of

    nix search git

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Re:macOS Nix setup: an alternative to Homebrew (2020) by ianthehenry on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @04:58PM (#27826235)

It actually is! There are lots of examples of arcane Nix commands, but as of Nix 2.0, you actually can type `nix search git`. And it works much better than `nix-env -qa` ever did.

Your point stands, though. For example, why is it:

    nix-env -iA nixpkgs.git

Instead of:

    nix install git

(I know what the answer is, but still, it's a question that I think a lot of newcomers are going to ask.)

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Re:macOS Nix setup: an alternative to Homebrew (2020) by carlthome on Sunday July 18, 2021 @07:03PM (#27877487)

Newcomer here. What's the answer?

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