ides

(idempotent devshell ephemeral services)

ides provides automatic idempotent launching of ephemeral services in your devshell, right here, right now.

what ?

it's automatic

• ides will instantly launch all your declared services, as soon as you enter the..

devshell

• works just like regular mkShell
• full support for shell.nix, flake.nix, and direnv

it's ephemeral

• ides packages and configs are present only in the nix store
• once shut down all traces effectively disappear

they're idempotent

• ides services cah only ever run one (1) instance of any package+config combination
• no matter how many times the devshell is opened or the launch command invoked

they're services

• ides runs on systemd user services - no impostor process manager needed

the bottom line

your dev environment now includes your service dependencies!

how ?

• bring ides into your nix expression (flake input/fetchGit)
• set it up by invoking its use function on nixpkgs instance you wish to utilise
• use mkShell like you normally would, but with spicy extras

here's how:

service configuration (caddy.nix)

{
  pkg = pkgs.caddy;
  args = "run -c %CFG% --adapter caddyfile";
  config = ''
    http://*:8080 {
    	respond "hello"
    }
  '';
}

we template the provided config's path as %CFG%, so you can feed it to the service as needed

classic nix(tm)

let
  pkgs = import <nixpkgs> {};
  ides = import (fetchGit {
    url = "https://git.atagen.co/atagen/ides";
  });
  mkShell = ides.use pkgs;
in
  mkShell {
    noCC = true;
    services.caddy = import ./caddy.nix;
  }

flake enjoyers

{
  inputs = {
    ides.url = "git+https://git.atagen.co/atagen/ides";
  };
  outputs = {
    nixpkgs,
    ides,
    ...
  }: let
    pkgs = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.x86_64-linux;
    mkShell = ides.lib.use pkgs;
  in {
    devShells.x86_64-linux.default = mkShell {
      noCC = true;
      services = {
        caddy = import ./caddy.nix;
      };
    };
  };
}

options

services: attrset of service configs: set up your services for ides noCC: bool: sets whether to use mkShell or mkShellNoCC ...: all other options are passed directly to mkShell as per usual

service config attributes

pkg: the package to launch as a service args: the arguments to the service writing %CFG% in this will template to your config location config: your service config. if plaintext isn't your thing, check out pkgs.writers and lib.generators for ways to generate json, yaml, etc from nix attribute sets ext: in case your service is picky about its file extension, set it here

cli

in case you need manual control, an ides shell provides commands:

• ides: raise the service set manually
• et-tu: shut down the service set manually
• restart: do both of the above in succession

why not reuse (nixpkgs/hm/...) module system ?

ides was originally conceived with this in mind, but in practice, it is rather difficult to decouple the module systems from the deployments they are intended to fulfill. occasional prodding is ongoing, and some activity appears to have begin in nixpkgs to modularise services, which would allow ides to take full advantage of the enormous nixos ecosystem.

acknowledgements

me bald gang nixpkgs manual authors those other guys who did something similar, i guess