Build issues with nix on mac

[aviaviavi]

When running buildAndWatch on mac, I am getting some build errors from nix. ./buildAndWatch cabal works fine.

~/d/f/www.haskell.org ❯❯❯ ./buildAndWatch                                                                                  ✘ 130
error: cannot coerce null to a string, at /Users/avi/dev/forks/www.haskell.org/builder/default.nix:27:21
(use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
~/d/f/www.haskell.org ❯❯❯ nix --version
nix (Nix) 2.3.14

I don't know much about nix, but happy to help troubleshoot if there are things I can try and report back on.

[tomjaguarpaw]

Thanks for the report! @TikhonJelvis or @rebeccaskinner: any ideas?

[rebeccaskinner]

I'm not sure off hand, it might be due to macos defaulting to zfs or something? I can try to borrow a mac to test this on soon and try to get a fix up, but if @TikhonJelvis has a mac and can look into it that might be more expedient.

[TikhonJelvis]

I only have a Macbook for work, so I haven't tried building the site on a MacOS. I could give it a try, but won't have much time for the next few days at least.

(Honestly, pretty sure I'm going to end up getting an M1 Macbook Air soon for stuff like this + on-the-go development :P.)

[aviaviavi]

I just ran into this again today, so just wanted to confirm it's still indeed an open issue and not stale. I still don't know much nix two years later 😭

[TikhonJelvis]

Yeah, Nix can be a bit hard to pick up. I believe that we now support a way to build the site entirely without Nix; have you tried that?

[aviaviavi]

Yeah I got the project building just fine with cabal, it just takes a while when building from scratch. Not a big deal but definitely a nice-to-have.