Re:The Curse of NixOS
by ghostwriter on Monday January 24, 2022 @06:49PM
(#30065852)
> Do you by chance know whether a non-Turing complete language like Dhall would be enough to “replace” nix?
Realistically, I'd say Dhall should be viewed as a complimentary typed DSL for Nix instead "a replacement". Dhall shines when it's used as a code-generator for recursive Nix expressions from typed configs that capture the intent of a build pipeline. You can see how it can be generated from this Haskell example, for instance [1]. The [2] shows you the available constructs, that do support recursive calls and recursive Nix sets.
Realistically, I'd say Dhall should be viewed as a complimentary typed DSL for Nix instead "a replacement". Dhall shines when it's used as a code-generator for recursive Nix expressions from typed configs that capture the intent of a build pipeline. You can see how it can be generated from this Haskell example, for instance [1]. The [2] shows you the available constructs, that do support recursive calls and recursive Nix sets.
[1] https://hackage.haskell.org/package/dhall-nix-1.1.23/docs/Dh...
[2] https://hackage.haskell.org/package/hnix-0.14.0.2/docs/Nix-E...