[HN Gopher] Replit now supports every programming language in Nix
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       Replit now supports every programming language in Nix
        
       Author : bobrenjc93
       Score  : 80 points
       Date   : 2021-05-24 20:26 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.replit.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.replit.com)
        
       | saagarjha wrote:
       | This wouldn't be Hacker News without pedantic corrections, but
       | the title should really say "every programming language in Nix".
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Ok, we've Nix'd the title above. Thanks!
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | jchw wrote:
         | Yeah. Somewhat notably, GNU Ada/gnat has been broken in Nix
         | forever, and generally the difficulties of making things work
         | correctly under Nix is great enough that some stuff is pretty
         | hard to keep up to date or available at all. Of course it works
         | well for almost everything, but there are limitations; it
         | definitely is a complex thing.
         | 
         | edit: It looks like my information might be out of date as it
         | appears gnat is back in Nixpkgs. That's great news, although I
         | think the point regarding complexity still stands, since I
         | believe it was broken for quite a while at some point, and
         | broke a few times since too.
        
       | Kinrany wrote:
       | Opening code in the example repls shows the contents of the
       | .replit file, but the file itself is not visible in the list of
       | files.
        
         | cbrewster wrote:
         | Hi, one of the authors here. The Nix environment on Replit is
         | under development right now, we hid the configuration files to
         | clean up the filetree as most users shouldn't need to know
         | about the config files unless they are customizing the repl
         | environment.
         | 
         | However, we are reverting that change for now since we don't
         | offer a good way to access those files yet. I'll reply here
         | once they are visible again.
        
       | Bostonian wrote:
       | No, you don't. Fortran is still an important language in
       | scientific computing, and you don't support it. The gfortran
       | compiler is part of gcc, so I think you should be able to. I also
       | don't see Cobol, Ada, and Pascal. If you don't think these
       | languages are worth supporting, so be it, but asserting that they
       | don't exist may irk people using those languages.
        
         | cbrewster wrote:
         | We don't have templates for every language, but if it's
         | available in Nix, you can set this up in a repl.
         | https://replit.com/@ConnorBrewster/fortran
         | 
         | We will be expanding our collection of templates over time, but
         | Nix allows us to make language setup be a user-space concern
         | instead of us internally maintaining a collection of languages
         | configurations and docker images.
        
           | Bostonian wrote:
           | Thanks, it works for me. Gfortran is a traditional compiler,
           | but LFortran is "is a modern open-source (BSD licensed)
           | interactive Fortran compiler built on top of LLVM. It can
           | execute user's code interactively to allow exploratory work
           | (much like Python, MATLAB or Julia) as well as compile to
           | binaries with the goal to run user's code on modern
           | architectures such as multi-core CPUs and GPUs."
           | 
           | When LFortran is ready, it would be nice if you supported it
           | too, since it is a Fortran REPL.
        
             | cbrewster wrote:
             | Neat, if it gets added to nixpkgs it will be available on
             | Replit!
             | 
             | https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs
        
         | whelming_wave wrote:
         | I was just able to set this up by looking at their Nix example
         | and swapping out                   pkgs.nix
         | 
         | for                   pkgs.gfortran
         | 
         | then changing the `.replit` file to compile and run a hello
         | world example I found online. Worked great!
        
       | jeppesen-io wrote:
       | It's really exciting to see the Nix ecosystem start to gain
       | traction here and there. I expect and look forward to greater
       | adoption over the next half decade or so
        
       | cercatrova wrote:
       | Every? Even Shakespeare? Whitespace? Piet?
        
         | cbrewster wrote:
         | If they are in Nixpkgs they will likely work in a repl. Nixpkgs
         | search: https://search.nixos.org/packages
         | 
         | Piet:
         | https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=unstable&show=hask...
        
       | WayToDoor wrote:
       | Does that mean I can finally use PHP+sqlite in a REPL ?
        
       | Jtsummers wrote:
       | I've been using Replit to make demos for some lunch & learn
       | events at work. It's easier when we don't all have the same
       | development stack, various combinations of languages + IDEs +
       | OSes. I've done most of the demonstrations with Java. However,
       | there were some demos in other languages I was wanting to do that
       | weren't feasible within Replit that now will be (at least
       | theoretically). I'm looking forward to trying this out later this
       | week.
        
       | azhenley wrote:
       | Can't wait to finally try out COBOL!
        
         | itsarnavb wrote:
         | Here ya go!
         | 
         | https://replit.com/@ArnavBansal/nixed-cobol
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-24 23:01 UTC)