Nixos-generators and iteration beyond image creation

[mbyrdap]

So I have been generating custom images which works great… but there’s no ability to iterate beyond the initial image. Is it possible to generate images which can be iterated upon?

e.g. there’s a nix configuration in the image when I can rebuild/switch

The process of building, uploading, provisioning (manually thanks to my vps provider…), testing, then repeating would be a lot less time consuming if it were possible.

Thanks in advance for any help

[sedlund]

I think the question is how to iterate on a nixos build artifact. Let me know if I got that wrong.

Like GNU make, nix builds software using build instructions. Instead of a Makefile it uses .nix files.

When software is built with make it is also not customary to distribute source code for that software along with the build artifacts (binaries).

With Nix and NixOS, to iterate you CAN put the configuration.nix or flake on the remote system (manually) and rebuild.

Or you can build it and deploy it from another machine with nixos-rebuild --target-host

https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Nixos-rebuild

Most people keep their system configuration in source control and build and deploy it remotely.

I use deploy-rs, Colmena is also very popular. But using standard nixos-rebuild is fine to begin with.

For deploying to a VPS, I find that using nixos-anywhere is the most straight forward to bootstrap any Linux distro into NixOS and then begin iterating.

Hope this helps.

[mbyrdap]

That's exactly what I am trying to do. VCS is good I'm just getting my feet wet with deploying to off-prem in the dev environment.

Thanks for all the info