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| date | title | permalink |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-07-17 | Nix and the Dendritic pattern | /daily/2025/07/17/nix-and-dendritic-pattern |
As I wrote yesterday, no two Nix configurations are the same.
As well as having different packages and configuration options, Nix configurations can all be structured differently - similar to Drupal websites.
Some are simple and others are very complex and manage many systems.
A lot of people will publish their dotfiles/Nix/NixOS configurations online for others to read and take inspiration from.
I was reading someone's code yesterday and found a pattern they wrote about called the Dendritic pattern.
Using the flake-parts module system, every file when using this pattern is a flake-parts module.
This is different to most configurations, where only some files are modules and others are imported as needed within other files.
From another perspective, having consistency and following a strict convention makes things like auto-importing modules possible.
I like it solves a problem, making configurations easier to maintain as each file is responsible for adding one feature and are self-contained so things can easily be re-organised.
If I was writing my configuration from scratch, this is the approach I'd take.
Or, I may start looking to refactor my current configuration soon to be based on this pattern.