I do this on NixOS. I have a NAS at home where I store most of the files I work on. My computers are internally immutable and almost all the files that change reside solely on the NAS as NFS shares. All of my computers are configured to auto-mount one of its folders at boot. NixOS sees that as an internal drive.
Then, simply navigate to the project folder where I have a flake and a .envrc file containing the command use flake .which will make direnv use Nix to provision the dependencies automatically. Whenever I save, those changes are reflected on all computers.

I like to also version control everything using git and this method allows that transparently.

The only part that I am missing is getting the permissions to align between all computers accessing that same folder. Sometimes I have to create a temp folder that uses rsync to keep up with any changes. If anyone has any pointers, I’m all ears. It rarely gets in my way but does rear its head sometimes. Otherwise, this setup is perfect when I’m at home.

Hard to describe in one phrase other than to say:

NixOS is to Linux as Unison is to Haskell

Content-addressing used in the context of programming languages in the service of solving the problem of distributed systems and their inability to share code across time and space.

Haskell has a content-addressed module that was perhaps influenced by Unison.

Here’s an excellent interview with one of the authors of Unison:

https://youtu.be/zHzpoVgqgc4

As others have said, Haskell and Rust are pretty great. A language that hasn’t been mentioned that I REALLY want to catch on, though, is Unison.

Honorable mention to my main driver lately: Purescript

I used to think json was the best until I found json lines or line delimited json. Thank me later. I use it all the time. You can append until you’re blue in the face. It’s great for log files. Each line is a valid json file.

It feels like magic. I think of it as the glue that makes almost all of my software work together seamlessly. I can’t wait to use it for one-click deployments of my software on a server or high-availability cluster.

This is why I decided to learn Nix. I built dev environment flakes that provision the devshell for any language I intend to use. I actually won’t even bother unless I can get something working reliably with Nix. ;)

For example, here’s a flake that I use for my Python dev environment to provide all needed wiring and setup for an interactive Python web scraper I built:

{
  description = "Interactive Web Scraper";

  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs?ref=nixpkgs-unstable";
    utils.url = "github:numtide/flake-utils";
  };

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, utils }: utils.lib.eachSystem ["x86_64-linux"] (system: let
    pkgs = import nixpkgs { system = system; };
  in rec {
    packages = {
      pyinputplus = pkgs.python3Packages.buildPythonPackage rec {
        pname = "pyinputplus";
        version = "0.2.12";
        src = pkgs.fetchPypi {
          inherit pname version;
          sha256 = "sha256-YOUR_SHA256_HASH_HERE";
        };
      };

      pythonEnv =
        pkgs.python3.withPackages (ps: with ps; [ webdriver-manager openpyxl pandas requests beautifulsoup4 websocket-client selenium packages.pyinputplus ]);
    };

    devShell = pkgs.mkShell {
      buildInputs = [
        pkgs.chromium
        pkgs.undetected-chromedriver
        packages.pythonEnv
      ];

      shellHook = ''
        export PATH=${pkgs.chromium}/bin:${pkgs.undetected-chromedriver}/bin:$PATH
      '';
    };
  });
}

Threads used to bewilder me until I started using Haskell. Holy shit that felt like magic, turning an app parallel with two lines of code.

Now, I just have to worry about memory limits….

Thank you!

How does this differ from graphQL?

Interesting perspective. Thanks for elaborating. You twisted my original concept in knots and won me over to your read of it.

I posted this meme in three places. Did you not read any of the threads where old, cranky FHS luddites came out of the woodwork to angrily dismiss the concept of immutable distros?

Duly noted. I DO NOT use Arch, btw. ;)

What I meant to try and say is that GUIX is like NixOS for Chad programmers.

It’s still fairly challenging and the documentation is probably, at best, dogshit (if I may be so blunt) at the moment.

OCI is probably a more worthy goal anyway, IMO. And it is unsurprisingly much more well-supported.

I’d look into building all of that in a flake just so you can encapsulate (and have a central version control of) all of your dependencies in case something does change.

I’m a bit of a Nix dork but I tend to try and declare my entire dev stack in a flake so it can follow me to every machine. It offers some of the “it works on every machine” guarantees that Docker offers while also forcing the compilation of the stack to happen natively (or at least pulls in some content addressed cache that offers security by being the exact hash for the whole dependency graph). I like that

Here’s how I used the Nix way to declare an interactive Python scraper the other day. With this method, I can lock dependencies between machines as a matter of course without having to use Docker:

{
  description = “Weed Scraper”;

  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = “github:NixOS/nixpkgs?ref=nixpkgs-unstable”;
    utils.url = “github:numtide/flake-utils”;
  };

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, utils }: utils.lib.eachSystem [“x86_64-linux”] (system: let
    pkgs = import nixpkgs { system = system; };
  in rec {
    packages = {
      pythonEnv =
        pkgs.python3.withPackages (ps: with ps; [ webdriver-manager openpyxl pandas requests beautifulsoup4 websocket-client selenium keyboard ]);
    };

    devShell = pkgs.mkShell {
      buildInputs = [
        pkgs.chromium
        pkgs.undetected-chromedriver
        packages.pythonEnv
      ];

      shellHook = ‘’
        export PATH=${pkgs.chromium}/bin:${pkgs.undetected-chromedriver}/bin:$PATH
      ‘’;
    };
  });
} 

I think some of these replies have perhaps missed the powerful idea that made me fall in love with Eelco Dolstra’s idea. Here’s what won me over.

For example: THE main feature is that you could have a different version of say Python (for the sake of this example) installed for each dependency in your system. Let’s say you had Brave working with one version of Python and another piece of software needed a previous version of Python. In an FHS style system, this would be challenging and you’d have to manually patch things to make sure the dependencies didn’t step on eachother. When you updated, your patches would likely have to be changed as well. So, system administration and updating can really break things.

In a Nix store where things can be content-addressed and linked by symlinks to their specific dependencies, they would just work alongside each other due to their unique, hash based folder locations. Each folder in the Nix store is named based on the sha256 hash of that piece of software’s ENTIRE dependency graph, which has powerful implications.

Because of this hash, they’re effectively hermetically sealed from each other and cannot step on each other. The software in the Nix store talks to eachother through symlimks that were made upon compilation of the system.

This is the very definition of Nix and taken far enough to define a whole OS is SUPER powerful concept.

Yeah. I think they’ll catch on in much the same way that lock files have become the standard in many languages. IMO, it just makes more sense to declare all dependencies atomically. I also think/hope it will supplant our overreliance on Docker containers to achieve these kinds of guarantees (where it actually makes sense or presents undeniable benefits).

This person gets it.

🤘

GUIX for one.

GUIX is to NixOS what Gentoo or Manjaro are to Arch.

I’ll probably try it someday when I get bored enough of systemd.

Yes for sure. Actually Nix is pretty long in the tooth and there are better implementations of Eelco’s brilliant idea. It’s just that they have a lot less effort, ubiquity, and hype behind them. GUIX is a good example of that. They literally can build an OS from scratch. I find Nix to be rock solid, so I stick with it. But, it’s an idea (all dependencies being content addressed in an immutable folder structure) to allow complexity that isn’t even achievable on FHS style systems.

For example: THE main feature is that you could have a different version of say Python (for the sake of this example) installed for each dependency in your system and they would just work alongside each other due to their unique, hash based folder locations. Each folder is named based on the sha256 hash of the dependency graph, which has powerful implications. Because of this hash, they’re effectively hermetically sealed from each other and cannot step on each other. This is the very definition of Nix and taken far enough to define a whole OS is SUPER powerful concept.

Shit, I’m rambling. Maybe I’ll pause to let you guide my rant. ;)

I’d actually argue the opposite in regards to clutter. If I switch to a new config without the software I don’t want anymore, that software goes away entirely when I do a garbage collect and there’s nothing left over like there might be in ‘’~/.config’’ on a non-immutable system.

IMO, the actual realization of Dolstra’s dream is flakes and home manager. They allow you to boil your whole config down to a git repo where you can track changes and rollback the lock file if needed.

I find it nice to open my config in an IDE and search by string inside of my config where I can comment out whatever I don’t need. Laziness also makes that pretty convenient too. Nix will only attempt to interpret what is accessible in code. If I comment out an import, that whole part of the config seamlessly shuts off. It’s quite elegant.

I’m even more envious of the atomicity of GUIX but IMO, it’s a little too much building the world from scratch for a newb like me.