• hallettj@beehaw.org
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    11 months ago

    I sometimes write a flake with those 4 lines of Nix code, and it comes out just messy enough that tbh I’m happier adding an input to handle that. But I recently learned that the nixpkgs flake exports the lib.* helpers through nixpkgs.lib (as opposed to nixpkgs.legacyPackages.${system}.lib) so you can call helpers before specifying a system. And nixpkgs.lib.genAttrs is kinda close enough to flake-utils.lib.eachSystem that it might make a better solution.

    Like where with flake-utils you would write,

    flake-utils.lib.eachSystem [ "x86_64-linux" "aarch64-darwin" ] (system:
    let
      pkgs = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.${system};
    in
    {
      devShells.default = pkgs.mkShell {
        nativeBuildInputs = with pkgs; [
          hello
        ];
      };
    })
    

    Instead you can use genAttrs,

    let
      forAllSystems = nixpkgs.lib.genAttrs [ "x86_64-linux" "aarch64-darwin" ];
      pkgs = forAllSystems (system:
        nixpkgs.legacyPackages.${system}
      );
    in
    {
      devShells = forAllSystems (system: {
        default = pkgs.${system}.mkShell {
          nativeBuildInputs = with pkgs.${system}; [
            hello
          ];
        };
      });
    }
    

    It’s more verbose, but it makes the structure of outputs more transparent.

    • toastal
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      11 months ago

      Saving the dependency is pretty big since each flake you import will bring along its jungle of dependencies now in your downstream project. I can’t think of a use case where < 10 lines is worth a dependency—especially since as you noted, lib has the glue right there for you to put it all together.