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Nix Derivation Madness

(fzakaria.com)
184 points birdculture | 2 comments | 31 Oct 25 14:28 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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eviks ◴[31 Oct 25 16:21 UTC] No.45773806[source]▶
> nix/store/24v9wpp393ib1gllip7ic13aycbi704g-ruby-3.3.9.drv

A different type of madness, but are ugly names so common, why not start with ruby-3.3.9 so any list of files is semantically sorted/readable?

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XorNot ◴[31 Oct 25 22:49 UTC] No.45777560[source]▶
The reason it's like this is because the only way to reliably grab it is to cut the string at the first hyphen - then the rest can be almost free text.

It you do it the other way it's harder. You can try this with nix commands /nix/store/<hash>-x is a valid way to refer to something in the store most of the time.

replies(1): >>45781480 #
1. Kudos ◴[01 Nov 25 13:28 UTC] No.45781480[source]▶
You could just use the last hyphen. It's not as simple since you need to scan the whole string, but it certainly doesn't seem like a challenge to me.
replies(1): >>45785694 #
2. XorNot ◴[01 Nov 25 21:45 UTC] No.45785694[source]▶
Yes but why pay that runtime cost for a problem the user can solve in human time using grep?