nixos

Hi, sorry if that title isn't very clear. I just started learning about nix a couple days ago; I'll explain what I mean.

I'm trying to set up a web application that I'm currently hosting with Docker containers, but do it with nix instead, like what's shown in this blog post: https://carjorvaz.com/posts/the-holy-grail-nextcloud-setup-made-easy-by-nixos/

However, I don't have NixOS on my server. I'm using Debian, with the nix package manager installed.

Is it possible to use a nix config file, like the one below, when only using the nix package manager? Currently it errors when I try to call nix-build with it, giving an error about calling a lambda function that never called self. If I remove the self argument, it complains about config, and so on.

{ self, config, lib, pkgs, ... }:

{
  services = {
    nextcloud = {
      enable = true;
      hostName = "cloud.example.com";

      package = pkgs.nextcloud27;

      # Let NixOS install and configure the database automatically.
      database.createLocally = true;

      # Let NixOS install and configure Redis caching automatically.
      configureRedis = true;

      < other settings here... >
    };
  };
}

From what I've read, the services part of that creates systemd services, which makes me think that it only works if you're on a full NixOS system and not only using the nix package manager. But it's been difficult to find a clear answer on that, probably because I'm still learning what terms to search for.