Jake Arkinstall
jakearkinstall.bsky.social
Jake Arkinstall
@jakearkinstall.bsky.social
Software engineer at Quantinuum, working on quantum computer emulation tooling in Rust and Python. Ex fintech (C++). PhD in physics. Nix addict. Help, I'm stuck in a universe factory.
TIL.

Wasteful.
October 8, 2025 at 2:49 PM
What in tarnation
October 8, 2025 at 12:07 PM
You still get that with devenv - in the docs link I sent you can see how to fully configure the environment. It's still also running nix under the hood. It just makes sane choices about what's local and mutable and what's static. Here's how they do it github.com/cachix/deven...
devenv/src/modules/integrations/android.nix at main · cachix/devenv
Fast, Declarative, Reproducible, and Composable Developer Environments using Nix - cachix/devenv
github.com
October 5, 2025 at 11:52 AM
That's priceless for development.

I used to do everything with nix derivations and stuff like "add this useful library" could take hours, when an Ubuntu user could just pip or apt install and have it in seconds.

Nix itself is best for packaging once you have already made your project, IMO.
October 5, 2025 at 11:49 AM
E.g. you can say "python environment with the uv package manager plz". Then you can just "uv add" to add a dependency.

The benefit - no need to specify the universe in Nix. You can install stuff like like anyone else.

The cost is that reproducibility becomes trust-based - e.g. that UV is sensible.
October 5, 2025 at 11:44 AM
I have no android experience but that sounds like one of the big problems devenv solves.

That which is immutable goes to the nix store and gets referenced from the venv. That which is mutable is managed locally.

You're tied to hermeticity when it makes sense, whereas raw flakes prefer all the time
October 5, 2025 at 11:38 AM
Well, kind of a blog. I want to do a bunch of interactive stuff as well that would be really awkward with existing backends.
October 4, 2025 at 1:03 AM
The reason I'm revising it?

To build a custom web backend, using CrowCPP, md4c, sqlite, scss, etc.

Even have an ingress router and auto rebuilds on file changes.

Why? For a blog.

Silly? Yes. Pragmatic? Absolutely not. But there is a lot of joy in building silly stuff for the sheer sake of it is.
October 4, 2025 at 12:53 AM
I did a video on it once.

youtu.be/BaR_GB7Tji4

Basically I disliked cmake, disliked Bazel, and loved Nix. Because each file is a derivation, only modified intermediates are changed on rebuild. Makes it very heavy on the nix store writes when you're in full swing dev mode though.
Building C++ projects in Nix using Nozzle
YouTube video by Jake Arkinstall
youtu.be
October 4, 2025 at 12:47 AM
For dev stuff, devenv is often the way to go IMO.

It's still nix, but it works in a really nice way and has a bunch of stuff configured out of the box in a way that's super easy to share with other devs (on any Linux or MacOS setup)

devenv.sh/integrations...
Android - devenv
Fast, Declarative, Reproducible, and Composable Developer Environments using Nix
devenv.sh
October 4, 2025 at 12:37 AM
We've now even gone past postmodern C++ and are now entering late-stage C++.
October 3, 2025 at 2:01 PM
As for understanding how long Windows runners take, the physics hasn't been invented yet.

One hypothesis is that they involve the use of Reissner-Nordstrom black holes, and that they complete in a reasonable timeframe - but in an inaccessible universe.
October 2, 2025 at 11:59 AM
"Of course you can't actually pull yourself up by your bootstraps, that's impossible"

You spent 4 days either inventing hoverboots or writing an assembler that operated through hoverboot-related means.

And in the 5th day you rested.
October 2, 2025 at 1:14 AM
999 is a good choice for the final episode. Any more than that, and rumour has it that the right side of the screen corrupts, there isn't enough fruit to finish the episode, and Jason would spend eternity trying to escape ghosts.
September 30, 2025 at 12:50 AM
Have you tried the spack slack?
September 29, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Nix is great for "I want to configure this once, built it a few times, and it should work many places".

But that's not really the HPC use case.

E.g. Spack's original paper discussed Nix (amongst others) and provided the benefits of something different.

tgamblin.github.io/pubs/spack-s...
tgamblin.github.io
September 29, 2025 at 2:31 PM
ADHDGI

User: "hey chat, get me started with making a basic blog"

ChatGPT: "Wordpress? Ghost? Hugo? OOHH I HAVE AN IDEA. Make every post a commit message. Your menu could be a mermaid diagram. Ooh maybe we could use an FPGA, and rebuild on push to main. Btw do you have an rj45 crimp tool?"
September 29, 2025 at 12:30 AM