Glacie: A Sane Alternative to Nix Flakes for Project Management

Glacie provides a straightforward approach to Nix-based project management without the complexity of Nix flakes. It aims to create reproducible builds while maintaining a simpler mental model and workflow.

Features

• Simple project structure with a single entry point (glacie.nix)
• Compatible with existing Nix tooling
• No special syntax or concepts beyond traditional Nix

Getting Started

Project Structure

A typical Glacie project requires:

1. A glacie.nix file in your project root
2. Optional additional Nix files referenced by glacie.nix
3. Some kind of dependency pinning system (we recommend npins)

Example glacie.nix:

{
  system ? builtins.currentSystem,
  sources ? import ./npins,
  pkgs ? import sources.nixpkgs { inherit system; },
}:
{
  package = pkgs.callPackage ./package.nix { };
  shell = pkgs.mkShell {
    packages = [
      (pkgs.python3.withPackages (ps: [
        ps.numpy
        ps.scipy
      ]))
    ];
  };
}

Usage

Building a Project

To build the default package in a Glacie project:

glacie build

To build a specific attribute from the project:

glacie build --expr 'self.shell'

To build a project at a specific path:

glacie build /path/to/project

License

Glacie is licensed under the LGPL-3.0-or-later.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! You can find the project repository at: https://hub.darcs.net/weethet/glacie