Nix Flakes - An Overview 

Means a lot coming from you! Thank you!

Hiiii Vimjoyer!

You can use Home-Manager in both standalone or as a NixOS module when using Snowfall Lib. You won't have to worry about NixGL if you're on NixOS, but on other linux systems you may need to use it to make sure graphics work for some applications. This is unrelated to Snowfall Lib, though :)

it does: nix repl Also json is NOT a configuration language. It's an object expression language. nix is a functional expression language. Because nix is a purely functional language you need to understand the paradigm. There is no "steps" in nix (a log/print function will not help you much). You have declarations that define state and outputs. You can have the following: flake.nix flake.lock home.nix common.nix configuration-home.nix configuraiton-server.nix you can have import expressions and write your own functions to make redundant declarations in many files. the common.nix can have expressions that are used in both home and server configurations. the flake.nix and flake.lock ensure that the inputs are the same every single time your build. the power of nix is that you can have 1 flake manage an entire network of computers, and git track it for time-machine like rollback. You have to remember the goal is reproducability. If you could imperitively change things you would break your state and lose all the powers nix gives you. If you want a config to be able to change, don't declare it in your config, but know that you will lose the reproducability.

@@MrVampify > it does: > nix repl Thanks, man. Why don't NixOS communit on Discord be like you! instead of educating me on silly NixOS topics, the OS is just a tool after all. I just found Repl and Eval. Both are great, tho they don't save data to config files. I need to interface with the config files, not just the OS. > Also json is NOT a configuration language. It's an object expression language. It is, to many people. If not, it could be, what could stop it? What's a config? how complex is your config? what would stop some random string format from being a config language? This never ends, but it's of no good pedantically splitting hairs. However, I only mentioned JSON because of it's versatility, sorry if I caused any confusion! > nix is a functional expression language. > Because nix is a purely functional language you need to understand the paradigm. I like most of the functional programming paradigm, that's never my problem. > There is no "steps" in nix (a log/print function will not help you much). You have declarations that define state and outputs. No idea what you said here, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. > You can have the following: > flake.nix > flake.lock > home.nix > common.nix > configuration-home.nix > configuraiton-server.nix > you can have import expressions and write your own functions to make redundant declarations in many files. > the common.nix can have expressions that are used in both home and server configurations. > the flake.nix and flake.lock ensure that the inputs are the same every single time your build. > the power of nix is that you can have 1 flake manage an entire network of computers, and git track it for time-machine like rollback. I'm yet to explore that side of it. > You have to remember the goal is reproducability. If you could imperitively change things you would break your state and lose all the powers nix gives you. It doesn't have to be a black-white situation: we could have both, the command could reflect the changes in a config file, or maybe I just want to do some temporary stuff, one command and rebuild to get the old state. The reason I need that interface, because in Installation phase, I needed to have some booting options changed to automate my installation, I wouldn't need it If I found some official config file for installation (I'm planning to learn Disko, althogh many folks in NixOS Discord server advised me not to). > If you want a config to be able to change, don't declare it in your config, but know that you will lose the reproducability. Again, why not have the best of both world? Anyways, I already made some silly installation script and hosted it in my repo. I'll soon add to it the post-installation flakes thingy, and probably won't need to cry about such topic.

think of it as a docker container. Configuration.nix is a giant function in nix language. The first set of {} is parameter list, and second one in which we declare our Nixos environment is return value, a giant data set. It’s just inputs and outputs in flakes. Except in flakes we write it differently, not as function but a data set. We put parameters in inputs and return values in outputs, and that’s it. The only difference between configuration.nix and a flake is that we have much better control over inputs and outputs, particularly inputs(dependencies).

It's another way of configuring the system ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, it'll manage your /etc/nixos/.configuration.nix instead of doing it the traditional way. And home-manager is a configuration that are specific for the home directory. I find these topics really simple, it's just the way they explain it is really unusual, they are unusual people after all! (kidding)