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Thoughts on flake-parts? (self.nix)

submitted 1 day ago by bijectivehomomorphism to c/nix

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I've been working on my configuration for a while now using flakes. I can already understand the appeal of flake-parts, and my configuration has always been spread out across multiple files according to specific features. ATM I don't really have any good modules to share, but what's your opinion?

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[–] Corbin 3 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

I don't really like flake-parts or flakelight. I think that part of this is sheer brutalism (I don't mind writing bare Nix) but part of it is a desire to not rely on flakes which don't carry their own weight, following Wirth's principle for compilers.

That said, github:numtide/flake-utils does carry its own weight by managing multiple system values, especially in flakes that support more systems than upstream nixpkgs, and I've found myself using it in nearly everything; flake-utils makes it fairly easy to have leaf packages that are e.g. supported on both amd64 and aarch64. I know flake-parts does this too, but not in a way I enjoyed.

I just noticed that you said "my configuration." A machine, perhaps? My NixOS configuration is split into over a dozen NixOS modules and each machine has a list of included module files. I'm not using any flake-management tools for that flake; each machine has a hardcoded system and (like sibling comment from @[email protected]) they're all crammed into one big flake.nix so that the machine hostnames line up correctly when using the flake in argv:

$ sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake git://git.example.local/one.big.flake.git

Seems facetious at first, but it facilitates automatic updates via flakes, just like with classic channels.

[–] bijectivehomomorphism 2 points 16 hours ago

Hey thanks, this is the sort of perspective I was looking for. As far as you've revealed, I'm pretty sure we have nearly the same setup.

I wanted to see if flake-parts would be any enhancement, but it seems not since I'm also managing servers with along with my personal huge flake. I'm working on moving git-crypt out of my config so I can rebuild it straight from git, but I can't find a way to declare my email in secrets (sops-nix you're good at everything but...not trivial secrets)

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