nixos VS nickel

I don't know. Have been using colorbuddy for ages now and it has always done exactly what I want. I don't need the "instant reaload" that lush advertices, doing :source on the colorscheme file, does the same for me to preview changes instantly. This is my theme, in case you need something to start with: - https://github.com/pinpox/nixos/blob/main/home-manager/modules/nvim/lua/config/pinpox-colors.lua

I use this to serve a directory temporarily.

I can't remember why I put that workaround in there, might not be needed any more. The above config is part of my dotfiles, I use my Bose blueutooth headphones by connecting them via the blueman-applet if the don't pair automatically

Here is an example from my config : I'm using an external flake called "matrix-hook", which is a little tool I wrote and have put in a separate flake. It get's included here. I am then passing self to each of the nixosConfigurations here, this allows me to import the module from the external flake in the configuration.nix of the host where I want to use it.

Yep, I have two different modules with defaults for server and for desktop. Host-specific settings are set in the according /machines//configuration.nix file. Most stuff is modularized into modules that can be reuesed and enabled at will.

Yep, I'm using the toJSON function already. The problem I had, was that not all applications use JSON as configuration format. Also the nix code gets very long, if you have to write the whole template as a string, which I find quite unreadable. Mustache is a pretty simple frequently used templating language, here is an example template that get's rendered by the nix code above.

My system uses a uniform colorscheme defined here. Configs for all applications I use read that and use the same colors. The wallpapers are randomly generated by a tool I wrote, it also automatically matches the colorscheme. Icons and symbols are colored the same way for awesomeWM.

In case you are interested I use this and this to generate colorschemes, awesome config and a matching wallpaper

Check out wezterm it has replaced tmux for me. Very active development, fast and just the right amount of features for my taste. It is configured in Lua, so if you are doing that for neovim already, it's another plus. I use it in combination with awesomeWM. My (not very special) config is here if you need something to start with.

So, its key features are:

1. domain-specific: designed for conveniently creating and composing derivations. This reason alone already justifies a new language, or an embedded domain-specific language (such as the Guile/Scheme for guix), or a mix of both (Starlark, the build language of Bazel embedded in a restricted Python-variant).

2. purely functional: this ties well into the philosophical backing of Nix the package manager, which aims to be purely functional, also known as hermeticity in other build systems (Bazel).

3. lazily evaluated: similar to other build systems (including Bazel), so that you can build only what you need on demand.

4. dynamically typed: this one is controversial. Being dynamically typed—in other words, not developing a type system—gets Nix out of the door first. But users often complain about the lack of proper types and modularity. There are experiments to address this, such as Nickel (https://github.com/tweag/nickel).

It is understandable that a one-pager may not have space for the whys.

Nickel：Nickel is a straightforward configuration language aimed at automatically generating static configuration files. Essentially, it's akin to JSON with the addition of functions and types.

Also look at nickel which is an evolution of nix. It's my favorite in this space.

nickel-lang.org

https://github.com/tweag/nickel

Or this https://github.com/tweag/nickel

Nickel is a programming language. While HCL is just a configuration format, so not really comparable.

Here's a comparison with similar tools: https://github.com/tweag/nickel#comparison

As for 'providence', I suppose you meant provenance :) it's been delayed because this was less critical for 1.0 to decide on or to implement (as it: it doesn't break backward compatibility in any way to add this feature in the short term), but this is very much on the roadmap: Issue #235. That's a must-have in a language with merging like Nickel.

Have you considered using a different language for templating? this could be a BIG selling point. Some good ones are cue-lang (though I haven't seen support for rust), kcl or nickel-lang.