nix-beam-flakes VS flake-parts

I left it vague because I didn't want to seem self-promotional. Unmerged documentation branch is the best starting place here: README, docs folder of that branch, example from develop. I daily drive it at work, and on a personal project for about 8 months. Doesn't do well for monorepos with disparate BEAM versions yet, but there are escape hatches and usage-as-library too. For the typical Phoenix project with a few extra system deps it's a pretty good onramp. perSystem.beamWorkspace.devShell.extraPackages is how you add arbitrary buildInputs like your VIPS stuff and .extraArgs for additional arguments to mkShell, such as your non-sensitive envvars. There's a page for future goals too. Publishing the rendered docs as a static site is in my TODOs, it's mostly glue left.

There are attempts like

https://flake.parts/

or

https://github.com/nix-community/flakelight

Their aim is to create an ecosystem of reusable Nix libraries. But it is tiny.

You can also just install flakes doing nix profile install . I wrote a tool to make it a bit easier, npt but it's completely optional. Once you install the packages with nix profile. Then in your repos you can use a flake with a devShell and run nix develop. Check https://flake.parts to write your flakes.

Definitely use flakes from the get-go. It's much more sane. Nix's documentation can be unorganized, but read through it when you can. Modules and other projects tend to have their own documentation as well, like Home Manager and flake-parts

That's not a typo, there OP is referring to https://github.com/hercules-ci/flake-parts