Hacker News Reader

Comment by xcdzvyn | Hacker News Reader

Interesting, so the docs are better than Nix'?

I've been meaning to finally figure out LISP, I'd be willing to use this as an excuse!

I used Nix for a few months several years ago, so their documentation is probably better now than I was when I used it, but yeah, I find the Guix documentation to be much more pleasant to use than the Nix documentation was when I used it.

This is partially because it uses an existing language, rather than a home grown language. Guix was also my entry point for learning Lisp, and the abundance of learning material for the language will probably always dwarf that of Nixs homegrown language. I actually watched all of the SICP lectures; I found that to be an incredible resource to get my footing.

It's also important to note that Guixs documentation is readily available on the system using the GNU info utility, which if you're not familiar with, is like man but on steroids. If you use Kagi, I also made this lens[0] that allows one to search through the web version of the documentation, the mailing list archives, and the IRC logs all at once using !guix.

[0] https://kagi.com/lenses/l7mPOuJp7zljHquBjsekFn6dM9Thw1A8

I use nix and the documentation is dogwater. It’s the best system I have ever used, but by god you need to get your hands dirty with it for a while.

Having spoken to a some people involved with the project, my understanding is that there's a significant schism between factions "Flakes are unfinished software, and our documentation should not focus on them" and "Flakes are what the majority of the userbase is using, and we should document them". I hope this will eventually get better if Flakes are ever stabilized.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com