I just wasted half an hour reading through the threads.
The gist is that NixOS has some weird dependency management that overrides Home Assistant's in a way that makes HA on NixOS a unique experience. And NixOS is not done repackaging HA, so it is in an unfinished state that only advanced users should attempt. ThIS will inevitably confuse users. Those users will then go to HA for support and will be unable to get it. HA doesn't want to support that and was pretty clear about it. Then this Jorg person got all up in arms and threw a hiss fit all over the internet and everybody got tense.
NixOS offers reproducible builds, which is why their package manager is the way it is. pip doesn't seem to offer very good support for that: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326#issuecomment-86... (I don't use pip so I don't know enough to comment on it)
The NixOS also offered several ways to prevent just "go[ing] to HA for support and will be unable to get it":
So it is not just NixOS's "weird dependency management".
The threat to relicense the software came after the NixOS devs offering several ways to prevent more burden, and after the HA dev discovered Fedora packages it too:
> The gist is that NixOS has some weird dependency management that overrides Home Assistant's
In other words, NixOS does what every other distro do and package every dependency required to run the application beforehand. HA devs appear to be claiming in almost every single one of the linked discussions that the Nix package is broken, but I can't find them pointing to any concrete evidence or specifics. I doubt they have any, because they can't have tried it out in a matter of few hours.
> And NixOS is not done repackaging HA
HA devs appears to be making a whole point out of this too, but it's quite overblown considering that the example being listed is a dependency that was introduced only days prior [1].
> HA doesn't want to support that and was pretty clear about it.
Did you see the Nix devs' proposal early on about requiring users to set the option `config.ambee.acceptThatThisPackageIsNotSupportedByUpstreamDevelopersAndIWillGoToNixpkgsToReportAnyIssues = true` [2] in order to be able to use the package? That was met with immediate hostility from HA devs.
> Then this Jorg person got all up in arms and threw a hiss fit all over the internet and everybody got tense.
That's likely not the impression people get from looking at any of the mentioned links, which is presumably why the prior HN thread mentioned in GP seems to have blown up. If anything, it makes me think twice about using HA myself because I fear this is the standard response I'd get from HA devs if I ever dare file an issue.
> Did you see the Nix devs' proposal early on about requiring users to set the option `config.ambee.acceptThatThisPackageIsNotSupportedByUpstreamDevelopersAndIWillGoToNixpkgsToReportAnyIssues = true`
I did see that but it's somewhat irrelevant because the person that would know what that means would already know where to ask the right question. And the person that has no idea what they're doing would just type 'true' and not know why. I'm in the latter camp btw. Things have to be mostly idiot proof for me. When they're not I'm going to ask questions where I think the most experts are. If I have a problem with HA, I dont care where I got it from or what configs I had to do surgery on, I'm gonna post my question in the HA forums.
To be clear if I was trying to use HA on NixOs at this very moment, I would have no idea what questions are appropriate where except that my problem is with HA so thats where I'd ask it.
> That's likely not the impression people get from looking at any of the mentioned links
We're all different, but as a person ignorant of NixOs and HA, it's the impression I came away with.
> irrelevant because the person that would know what that means would already know where to ask the right question
How can people not know where to ask questions when all the people who'd ask has been told exactly where in a single short English sentence? What's not clear about "accept that this package is not supported by upstream developers and I will go to Nixpkgs to report any issues"?
> it's the impression I came away with
It's not a reasonable one on two counts. Let's go over the statement again:
> Then this Jorg person got all up in arms and threw a hiss fit all over the internet and everybody got tense.
First, he did not appear "all over the internet." The are only two places where I can find him discussing the topic online: in the Nixpkgs GitHub issue and a single Home Assistant thread where he sought to get clarifications from upstream regarding licensing policies.
Second, that he "threw a hiss fit" is taking your imagination to a real stretch. In no single comment did he express anger or frustration. All he ever did in his very few comments was 1. decline to drop the package from Nixpkgs and 2. ask about Home Assistant licensing. Take that in contrast with the behavior of HA devs where almost every single comment in the linked threads is provocative, sarcastic, and condescending, making evidence-free claims of incompetence and breakage at every step of the way right from the start.
I'm a random human on the internet who doesn't care about HA or NixOS and went down a rabbit hole. My impressions of what I saw are my impressions. I don't care about any of this enough to argue about it.
I will answer this, though, because its happened to me a thousand times:
> How can people not know where to ask questions when all the people who'd ask has been told exactly where in a single short English sentence? What's not clear about "accept that this package is not supported by upstream developers and I will go to Nixpkgs to report any issues"?
I install HA on NixOS and everything seems to work perfectly and I'm happy. I buy the latest, just released Phillips Hue light and try to connect it and can't get it connected. I go to HA to try and troubleshoot ( because thats what I'm using and where this question is most relevant). HA devs tell me I'm missing a dependency and to pip it in or add it or however it normally works. I can't on NixOS and start collecting weird exception messages. In the end, HA devs spend hours wondering wtf is going on with my system until they realize it's NixOS and doesn't work the way they expect it to. I've now wasted their time unintentionally and had no idea it was actually an issue related to packaging I should have been asking about in NixOS - who are totally unaware of the trouble being caused to HA. That's just how the real world works.
The gist is that NixOS has some weird dependency management that overrides Home Assistant's in a way that makes HA on NixOS a unique experience. And NixOS is not done repackaging HA, so it is in an unfinished state that only advanced users should attempt. ThIS will inevitably confuse users. Those users will then go to HA for support and will be unable to get it. HA doesn't want to support that and was pretty clear about it. Then this Jorg person got all up in arms and threw a hiss fit all over the internet and everybody got tense.