3 ms·

I have not used flakes at all for my NixOS server. To put it one way, why should I care?

• pmarreck 4y ago
  (speaking as someone who hasn't actually fully converted over to flakes yet) Because it actually fulfills the original promise of Nix: Forever-reproducible builds. Anyone who's ever dealt with a lockfile across any stack that supports that idea in dependency definition, knows how this works and what it's good for.
  • lijogdfljk 4y ago
    Couldn't agree more. I love Nix (well, i have nits with the lang/UX), but Flakes is essential imo. Using Nix without Flakes is going through 99% of the trouble for concrete, reproducible builds but then dropping the last 1%. I had my non-Flake builds break like it was a mutable operating system. I just don't get why Flakes aren't the standard.
• rgoulter 4y ago
  The UX is much nicer with flakes. Flakes provide a consistent entry-point to a set of Nix files (rather than just a hoping that Nix files conform to some convention). Nix flakes also let you get by with even less worry about the system state: e.g. you don't need to add channels or put your code in your user's overlays directory. You can just use the path/URI to a flake, and nix will take care of downloading all the inputs appropriately.