Interesting. Nix carefully tracks runtime and build time dependencies, so this seems surprising to me.

Hell yea

Got a link?

ah! I need some custom stickers made in bulk on short order

I love the sentiment of this style of message (which I’ve seen you do a bunch of times.) I’ve always wondered what it means though. Is there like, a procedure/coordination? I’d love to see behind the curtain!

Oh my god that is beautiful.

Upgrade to Determinate Nix 3.4, by ... I mean, that picture :) but for posterity:

determinate-nixd login
sudo determinate-nixd upgrade

Or install it for the first time from docs.determinate.systems (we recommend the package on macOS!)

Anyway, Determinate Nix 3.4.1 is now out. It warns if you're using channels, and implicit, or indirect (registry) flake references in flake.nix files. Determinate Nixd had some nits picked, like over-eager error logging. And of course, the `upgrade` command is more instructive.

This represents our values in a lot of ways:

Be honest & transparent: We know this isn't great, here's the bug.

Don't make things worse: Here's how to move forward.

It should feel good to use: It has system specific instructions depending if you're on macOS, NixOS, and Linux.

In the meantime, Determinate Nix 3.4.1 helps you upgrade more successfully. Where it used to crash out on a ridiculous error, now it _tells you_ that you have to log in.

that means you have to log in to FlakeHub to download prebuilt upgrades. This is not some brain genius number-go-up-maxxing, but an annoying side effect of Product Design Decisions. I wrote up a tracking ticket for folks while we solve that: github.com/DeterminateS...

That is THE use case, yeah! I agree. That’s exactly why we’re doing this 💪

It is a VERY bizarre feature, and I’m glad to be deprecating it 😅

These two strategic changes are aimed at eliminating confusion and surprise, and are based on working with our users and hearing their feedback.

I can't wait for Determinate Nix 3.4 to ship on Monday!

The two issues compound with `nixpkgs` (indirect flakeref) and `<nixpkgs>` (nix path/channel "diamond" reference.) They look similar, but mean entirely different things.

It gets worse when root's channels are configured differently from a user's. Even worse still on macOS.

Similarly, we frequently see confusion when locking a flake which uses implicit inputs and indirect flakerefs. Indirect flakerefs are great on the CLI. Determinate Nix will start warning when you use them as a flake.nix input url, where they're a negative: github.com/DeterminateS...

We've seen countless users trip themselves up on outdated channels and confusing them for the `nixpkgs` flake ref used by `nix run nixpkgs#`, etc.

Determinate Nix Installer hasn't shipped configured channels for years, and now we're warning against them: github.com/DeterminateS...