A hack to efficiently install the flakes maintained at my home.
This is for:
- "dirty" (local, temporary) flakes and packages
- ... that I currently maintain and install
- ... but do not want in my home-manager profile
It basically tries to reinvent the "dirtiness" of nix-env and nix-channel with flakes.
Why? Here are some facts:
- each project has to be in its own git repository
- each package carries along its own dependencies, e.g.
nixpkgs nix is terrible with git submodules, at least for now
(this is fixed as of nix v2.23.3)
Without this hack, we have the following problems:
- there will be N copies of deps, e.g.
nixpkgsfloating in my system - bringing them up to date requires many
cds andnix flake updates
This flake solves the problem by:
- gathering all these packages into a single env so I can
nix profile installall of them - redirecting common dependencies e.g.
nixpkgsto the nix registry so I cannix flake updateall of them - in fact,
nix flake updateis in.envrcso the flake inputs are automatically synced with the localnix registry circumventing the submodule issues with a separate--git-dirat some other location
(this is now obsolete since nix v2.23.3)
I do use home-manager but these are the temporary packages I specifically do not want to keep track of.
We are emulating the cursed nix-env & nix-channel functionality, where things are dirty yet efficient.