Add daily email for 2024-08-20

Writing Bash scripts with Nix

source/_daily_emails/2024-08-20.md

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+---
+title: Writing bash scripts with Nix
+date: 2024-08-20
+permalink: daily/2024/08/20/writing-bash-scripts-with-nix
+tags:
+    - software-development
+    - linux
+    - nix
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+    Dependency injection in bash scripts? (Nix mentioned)
+---
+
+Yesterday, I wrote about [a bash script I've written][0] to export a list of videos on my external hard drive.
+
+If you [looked at the script on GitHub][1] and you're familiar with bash scripting, you may have thought it looked a bit odd or missing some things.
+
+That's because I wrote it [with Nix][2] - the tool I've been using for almost two years to manage my dotfiles and operating system configuration.
+
+Using Nix for bash scripts has advantages, like automatically adding the shebang line, setting sensible defaults for error handling, and automatically running `shellcheck` when switching.
+
+I think the main advantage, though, is it can inject any dependency packages into the script.
+
+This script needs `tree` and `jq`, so they are dependencies of the script and the script can't run if they aren't installed.
+
+But, I don't need to assume they are available. Nix can do it automatically and make any packages added as build inputs available.
+
+Now, if anyone else wanted to use this script, or I wanted to share another script with colleagues or a client, they can use it without needing to install any dependencies separately and the script will continue to work in the future using its explicitly-added dependencies.
+
+[0]: {{site.url}}/daily/2024/08/19/bash-scripting-for-fun-and-profit
+[1]: https://github.com/opdavies/dotfiles.nix/blob/a1ef2d1402c9c607e7a3e4427ce125d0cabeddcd/lib/shared/scripts/export-video-list.nix#L12-L31
+[2]: {{site.url}}/archive/2022/09/26/experimenting-with-the-nix-package-manager