Add daily email for 2024-11-26

The Nix language

source/_daily_emails/2024-11-26.md

@@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
+---
+title: The Nix language
+date: 2024-11-26
+permalink: daily/2024/11/26/the-nix-language
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - linux
+  - nix
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+  Today, let's have a look at the Nix programming language.
+---
+
+Yesterday, I wrote about [Nix the package manager][0].
+
+To use it, you need to write code in the Nix language in .nix files.
+
+To see an example, you can see [my dotfiles on GitHub][1] as well as lots of other people's that they've published.
+
+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.
+
+This is the code that installs Nginx on my server:
+
+```nix
+services.nginx = {
+  enable = true;
+  serverNamesHashBucketSize = 256;
+};
+```
+
+These are some of the packages I have installed on my laptop:
+
+```nix
+environment.systemPackages = with pkgs: {
+  devenv
+  dog
+  git
+  go
+  jq
+  php
+  phpPackages.composer
+  pv
+  tldr
+}
+```
+
+And this is how to configure processes [in a devenv configuration][2], which is built with Nix:
+
+```nix
+processes = {
+  tailwind.exec = ''
+    cd ${drupal.theme.path}
+    watchexec --exts css,twig tailwindcss --config assets/tailwind.config.ts \
+      --output dist/tailwind.css
+  '';
+};
+```
+
+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.
+
+For a crash course in the Nix language, take a look at <https://zero-to-nix.com/concepts/nix-language> or one of the many open-sourced configurations on GitHub.
+
+[0]: {{site.url}}/daily/2024/11/25/nix-the-package-manager
+[1]: https://github.com/opdavies/dotfiles/tree/main/nix
+[2]: {{site.url}}/daily/2024/11/11/could-nix-and-devenv-replace-docker-compose