purely dysfunctional catgirl

i think my main takeaway from Nix/Nixpkgs/NixOS is that the more you learn about it and the ecosystem around it, the faster you oscillate between "this is cool" and "lol this sucks". you never stop oscillating between these two absolutes.

anyway if any nix touchers out there use a deployment tool they actually like, even if you wrote it yourself, please let me know. i am evaluating options for replacing my bad python script

for most people nixos-rebuild with the target host option is sufficient.

if it is not and you want to build one, it should probably use nix-eval-jobs. i think some people like colmena, but I've not tried it because i am among those for whom nixos-rebuild is totally sufficient, even as someone who does cross compiled machines and tiny machines sometimes.

We had a project class with group projects in teams of 3 or 4 and we decided to build a robot to chase a cat with a laser. It uses MediaPipe to find the cat (software built by teammates), and a robot I built to move the laser.

I wrote a long blog post documenting all the decisions and misadventures of building the robot. It contains many things from porting NixOS to an embedded system to FPGA stuff, Rust and 3d printing.

why? it was easier than learning bitbake and yocto, and I believe that Nix could do their job way better and is easier to reproduce.

by the numbers: 3 patches required to make it boot, 1 forum post saving the day, 1 U-Boot patch submission, 1 eleven-year-old git bug found and reported, 409 lines of Nix script total

sources: https://github.com/lf-/de1-soc-nixos

x-post from mastodon at https://queer.af/@leftpaddotpy/109849542445550928

I just backported a bunch of progress on the DE1-SoC NixOS port from my school-project tree.

Now working:

• u-boot boot script, run before extlinux.conf is loaded
• loading a FPGA configuration image (kinda the point of the device, innit :P)
• initializing the FPGA bridge
• autoboot with u-boot
• auto resizing the root fs

the whole lot is posted to https://github.com/lf-/de1-soc-nixos, as before

let me know if i forgot any docs; this is a pretty complex project that has two homes

why? it was easier than learning bitbake and yocto, and I believe that Nix could do their job way better and is easier to reproduce.

by the numbers: 3 patches required to make it boot, 1 forum post saving the day, 1 U-Boot patch submission, 1 eleven-year-old git bug found and reported, 409 lines of Nix script total

sources: https://github.com/lf-/de1-soc-nixos

x-post from mastodon at https://queer.af/@leftpaddotpy/109849542445550928