Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by forrestthewoods 710 days ago
> but rather the package manager ("npm" or "pip" or similar) should do so on a system-wide basis.

I basically agree with this. With the caveat that programs should not use any system search paths and packages should be hardlinked into the project directory structure from a centralized cache. This also means that a dev version looks identical to a centralized version - both are just directories within the project.
1 comments
bomewish 710 days ago
Are you just describing something close to Nix?? In any case, Nix solves a lot of these problems.
link
forrestthewoods 710 days ago
Kind of, but not really. Nix is extremely complicated. Programs / projects including their dependencies is exceedingly simple.

Also, Windows is my primary dev environment. Any solution must work cross-platform and cross-distro. Telling everyone to use a specific distro is not a solution.

link
bomewish 709 days ago
It is complicated... but honestly I have found claude 3.5 to just 'fix it'. So you hardly have to spend much time spelunking. You just give it all your dependencies and tell it what you want. It'll whip up a working flake in a few iterations. Kinda magic. So yeah when you can abstract out the complexity it moves the needle enough to make it worth it.
link
xyzsparetimexyz 710 days ago
Nix != NixOS. It runs on WSL: https://github.com/nix-community/NixOS-WSL
link
forrestthewoods 710 days ago
Less than zero interest in WSL.

Nix fans are becoming as obnoxious as Rust fans. And I say that as an times annoying Rust fan.

link