Digga — slangy German for "good friend" — is a flake utility library that helps you declaratively craft and manage all three layers of your system environment within a single nix flakes repository:
- development shells (via
numtide/devshell), - home environments (via
nix-community/home-manager), and - host configurations (via
NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos).
This library is based on flake-utils-plus.
Status: Beta
Although this project has already matured quite a bit, a fair amount of api polishing is still expected. There are unstable versions (0.x.x) to help users keep track of changes and progress.
Usage
The best way to make use of library is with the Official template.
Check out the guide to get up and running.
Also have a look at devos's flake.nix.
If anything is not immediately discoverable via our mkFlake, please file a bug report.
Examples
Make sure to check out all the examples to see the different ways to make use of the digga api.
In the Wild
You can also see digga being actually used:
- @Pacman99: Personal, Server
- @danielphan2003 and make sure to also check out devos-ext-lib
- PubSolarOS
- @montchr: Dotfield – including darwin configurations
- @sweenu: pc, server and RaspberryPi deployment in one repo
Philosophy
In it's lib.mkFlake function, Digga implements a well-specified API
interface comprising four API containers that allow you to:
-
configure nixpkgs channels including internal and external overlays,
-
define NixOS hosts including internal and external NixOS modules as well as host defaults that apply to all hosts in the environment,
-
specify user home environments including internal and external home-manager modules, and
-
setup & combine a series of devshells that you like to have available in your projects.
Modules, Profiles & Suites
For NixOS- & home-manager-modules, Digga allows you to distinguish between modules, profiles and suites.
-
Modules are abstract configurations that, while holding the implementation, do not set any system state.
-
Profiles are concrete configurations that set system state within the profile domain.
-
Suites are a composable, clean and discoverable mechanism for profile aggregation.
Internal Art vs External Art
Overlays and modules can be defined internally coming from your repo or externally coming from an upstream flake. This distinction serves the library to only export your own work as the public flake output.
Downstream consumers of your flake can now more easily tell your art apart from other upstream art.
Contributing
We encourage contributions of any kind. The simplest way to get involved is to join the chat or report problems and ideas on the issue thread.
To craft well thought out APIs we need all the thoughts regarding new ideas.
Pull Requests are just as amazing.
Why flakes?
Flakes are a part of an explicit push to improve Nix's UX, and have become an integral part of that effort.
They also make Nix expressions easier to distribute and reuse with convient flake references for building or using packages, modules, and whole systems.
Shoulders
This work does not reinvent the wheel. It stands on the shoulders of the following giants:
🧅 — like the layers of an onion
👪 — like family
Inspiration & Art
Divnix
The divnix org is an open space that spontaneously formed out of "the Nix". It is really just a place where otherwise unrelated people work together and get stuff done.
It's a place to stop "geeking out in isolation" (or within company boundaries). A place to experiment, learn together, and iterate quickly on best practices. That's what it is.
It might eventually become a non-profit if that's not too complicated or, if those goals are sufficiently upstreamed into "the Nix", dissolved.
License
Digga is licensed under the MIT License.