[HN Gopher] Journaling using Nix, Vim and coreutils
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       Journaling using Nix, Vim and coreutils
        
       Author : icy
       Score  : 43 points
       Date   : 2025-08-12 14:04 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (tangled.sh)
 (TXT) w3m dump (tangled.sh)
        
       | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
       | I don't see what nix is doing for you? There's vim, absolutely,
       | coreutils (though I don't immediately see anything GNU-specific),
       | and a tiny wrapper script that happens to be written in flake.nix
       | but could trivially be factored out. I don't see anything that I
       | wouldn't expect to run on, say, OpenBSD if you installed vim.
       | 
       | (That said, yes, it's a nice journaling system)
        
         | bspammer wrote:
         | This is a pretty poor example for a few reasons, but the idea
         | is that anyone get can a shell with the tool fully installed
         | along with all its dependencies, with a single command:
         | 
         | nix shell 'git+https://tangled.sh/@oppi.li/journal'
         | 
         | It's massive overkill for a shell alias, but for a more complex
         | project it can be very nice.
        
         | rikafurude21 wrote:
         | author seems to be the type to follow tech trends and use them
         | to signal "coolness" - people like that use these absurd stacks
         | because its niche, not for any actual benefit
        
         | 0xCMP wrote:
         | Yea I don't see Nix doing much here particularly, but for me I
         | typically would do something like this to make the system as
         | consistent as possible over a long period of time without being
         | actively maintained.
         | 
         | I guess this does ensure the key `journal` command works
         | exactly the same because the dateutils binary will stay locked
         | to the version in the `flake.lock`.
         | 
         | I would have assumed that nvim would also be locked because
         | that's where I would expect more possible breaking changes with
         | the existing special config.
         | 
         | With little tools/projects like these I could easily see
         | months-years before it would get any active attention from me
         | again (or simply I wouldn't be using it; so it doesn't matter).
        
       | petepete wrote:
       | I wish all my todo items had 2-3 words. This looks fine with the
       | examples but I bet it's not so clean with realistic data.
        
       | semiinfinitely wrote:
       | what is this nix religion I keep hearing about
        
         | atrus wrote:
         | Nix is a form of computing that's simultaneously 20 years in
         | the past and 20 years in the future. I love it.
         | 
         | Honest answer though, it's a deterministic way of building up a
         | computer/environment. Think pip/uv/packages.lock but for
         | everything.
        
           | dizhn wrote:
           | open to the select few who are able to ignore what the
           | official documentation says and spend some on the (admittedly
           | friendly) irc channel to learn how it REALLY works.
        
       | sigmonsays wrote:
       | here I am tangenting into wtf tangled.sh is, maybe that's the
       | entire point of this submission.
        
         | pfych wrote:
         | I've seen it quite a bit on BlueSky with some devs I follow.
         | It's a social git host built on-top of ATProto (The underlying
         | tech of BlueSky): https://blog.tangled.sh/intro
        
       | jdonaldson wrote:
       | Nix always felt like an OS on the blockchain. It's fine if you
       | value verifiability above everything, but becomes very burdensome
       | if you find yourself tweaking your dev environment often. Still,
       | I think it probably teaches good discipline.
        
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       (page generated 2025-08-12 23:00 UTC)