oliverdavies.uk/content/node.6ccfb609-6371-462c-b91c-4aa22d23d248.yml

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title:
  - value: 'The Nix language'
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  - value: '2024-11-26T00:00:00+00:00'
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      <p>Yesterday, I wrote about <a href="/daily/2024/11/25/nix-the-package-manager">Nix the package manager</a>.</p>

      <p>To use it, you need to write code in the Nix language in .nix files.</p>

      <p>To see an example, you can see <a href="https://github.com/opdavies/dotfiles/tree/main/nix">my dotfiles on GitHub</a> as well as lots of other people's that they've published.</p>

      <p>It's a functional language so some of the concepts were new to me, but I picked it up fairly quickly and learned some of the paradigms and conventions.</p>

      <p>This is the code that installs Nginx on my server:</p>

      <pre><code class="nix">services.nginx = {
        enable = true;
        serverNamesHashBucketSize = 256;
      };
      </code></pre>

      <p>These are some of the packages I have installed on my laptop:</p>

      <pre><code class="nix">environment.systemPackages = with pkgs: {
        devenv
        dog
        git
        go
        jq
        php
        phpPackages.composer
        pv
        tldr
      }
      </code></pre>

      <p>And this is how to configure processes <a href="/daily/2024/11/11/could-nix-and-devenv-replace-docker-compose">in a devenv configuration</a>, which is built with Nix:</p>

      <pre><code class="nix">processes = {
        tailwind.exec = ''
          cd ${drupal.theme.path}
          watchexec --exts css,twig tailwindcss --config assets/tailwind.config.ts \
            --output dist/tailwind.css
        '';
      };
      </code></pre>

      <p>Once you have written the configuration, you can run it and install what you've specified, and it will do it the same way every time.</p>

      <p>For a crash course in the Nix language, take a look at <a href="https://zero-to-nix.com/concepts/nix-language">https://zero-to-nix.com/concepts/nix-language</a> or one of the many open-sourced configurations on GitHub.</p>

              
    format: full_html
    processed: |
      <p>Yesterday, I wrote about <a href="/daily/2024/11/25/nix-the-package-manager">Nix the package manager</a>.</p>

      <p>To use it, you need to write code in the Nix language in .nix files.</p>

      <p>To see an example, you can see <a href="https://github.com/opdavies/dotfiles/tree/main/nix">my dotfiles on GitHub</a> as well as lots of other people's that they've published.</p>

      <p>It's a functional language so some of the concepts were new to me, but I picked it up fairly quickly and learned some of the paradigms and conventions.</p>

      <p>This is the code that installs Nginx on my server:</p>

      <pre><code class="nix">services.nginx = {
        enable = true;
        serverNamesHashBucketSize = 256;
      };
      </code></pre>

      <p>These are some of the packages I have installed on my laptop:</p>

      <pre><code class="nix">environment.systemPackages = with pkgs: {
        devenv
        dog
        git
        go
        jq
        php
        phpPackages.composer
        pv
        tldr
      }
      </code></pre>

      <p>And this is how to configure processes <a href="/daily/2024/11/11/could-nix-and-devenv-replace-docker-compose">in a devenv configuration</a>, which is built with Nix:</p>

      <pre><code class="nix">processes = {
        tailwind.exec = ''
          cd ${drupal.theme.path}
          watchexec --exts css,twig tailwindcss --config assets/tailwind.config.ts \
            --output dist/tailwind.css
        '';
      };
      </code></pre>

      <p>Once you have written the configuration, you can run it and install what you've specified, and it will do it the same way every time.</p>

      <p>For a crash course in the Nix language, take a look at <a href="https://zero-to-nix.com/concepts/nix-language">https://zero-to-nix.com/concepts/nix-language</a> or one of the many open-sourced configurations on GitHub.</p>

              
    summary: null
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