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MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

(sigpipe.macromates.com)
2031 points jrk | 2 comments | 22 May 20 15:39 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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soraminazuki ◴[22 May 20 17:36 UTC] No.23274749[source]▶
Up until the release of Catalina, I've always upgraded to the latest version of macOS within a month or two. But some of the changes this time is really stopping me from upgrading.

As of Catalina, there's no sane way to install the Nix package manager without losing functionality because macOS now disallows creating new files in the root directory[1]. Nix stores its packages in the /nix directory and it's not possible to migrate without causing major disruptions for existing NixOS and other Linux users. This is too bad, since apart from Nix being a nice package manager, it also provides a sane binary package for Emacs. The Homebrew core/cask versions only provides a limited feature set[2][3].

[1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2925

[2]: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues/31510

[3]: https://github.com/caldwell/build-emacs/search?q=support+is%...

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glofish ◴[22 May 20 18:03 UTC] No.23275063[source]▶
IMHO the original choice of the path seems incredibly ill-advised and the main burden lies with the original developers.

sometimes old errors and mistakes come back and bite

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adamtulinius ◴[22 May 20 18:11 UTC] No.23275134[source]▶
What should the default nix store path have been then?
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1. hunterloftis ◴[22 May 20 18:18 UTC] No.23275215{3}[source]▶
In my very limited (I don't use nix) opinion, the default of /nix isn't an issue, but rather:

> and it's not possible to migrate without causing major disruptions for existing NixOS and other Linux users.

Software that can't be re-parented without breaking is destined to create problems for users... eventually.

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2. soraminazuki ◴[22 May 20 19:37 UTC] No.23276017[source]▶
Unfortunately, what you're asking for is fundamentally impossible with binary package managers.