this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Having options is not the same thing as documenting those options; well outlined documentation doesn't just dictate how to do something but also points out what you may want to do i.e. filling out unknown-unknowns.
Just because NixOS makes for an excellent DevOps template doesn't mean it can't also be an excellent platform for hacking together random crap. I understand that NixOS advertises itself as the former, but when I say "promises to be" I don't mean "makes a promise to be", but "has promise for being".
Features like: a common configuration interface, safe rollback, atomic changes, nixos-hardware all are features that enable developers to safely hack together solutions, and then have an excellent log detailing what they just did.
Agreed. The point is however that, with NixOS options, you do not necessarily need such documentation for unknown-knowns.
With many things however, we can simply delegate to the upstream documentation for some thing. See i.e. the paperless extra config example. We don't need to tell users how to configure their paperless, we just tell them that any upstream option goes into this settings option as an attrset.
NixOS options do to a degree fill out unknown-unknowns though, see I.e. the steam-hardware example. I've stumbled upon many handy options by searching for related options.
While the initial "hacking the crap together" phase is indeed harder in most cases, maintaining these hacks is much simpler thanks to overrides/overlays and the additive nature of NixOS options.
That quality can arguably make it "excellent" too.