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The original was posted on /r/nixos by /u/OldDadou on 2024-04-06 23:48:35.

Hey r/NixOS,

Over the past week, I’ve been experimenting with a little project called Flake-Containers. It’s a proof of concept aimed at simplifying the management of systemd containers using Nix flakes.

That being said, in my development workflow, I almost always define my development dependencies into a flake for Rust, Python, Go, etc. When I need to use different services, such as a database, I would typically rely on Docker. However, with flake-containers, I can directly benefit from NixOS services and enable and configure the services that I need, in a reproducible and shareable way.

It’s worth mentioning that while there already exists a way to manage NixOS containers using nixos-container, it integrates within a NixOS configuration. This project has been largely inspired by nixos-containers (in fact, most of the code comes from there). However, flake-containers enables the definition and management of NixOS containers without the need to update your system configuration. Furthermore, it should work on any Linux distribution with Nix installed.

I want to be upfront—it’s still very much an experiment, and I haven’t incorporated it into my workflow just yet. However, I’ve found the process of tinkering with it quite enlightening.

I’m keen to gather some feedback and thoughts from the community. If you have a moment to spare, I’d love for you to check it out: .

Thanks for taking the time, and I’m eager to hear your thoughts!