<palign="center">Because Nix never held your hand. It shot off your fingers and spat out God's longest stack trace</p>
Never have I longed for a coup de grâce more than my attempts at using the `libnix` APIs.
*C++ isn't real and it can't hurt you...* Nixide is cheaper than therapy and provides a completely
redesigned approach to interacting with the Nix API. These aren't just bindings to `libnix`, I've gone through and
redesigned error handling, simplified all provided interfaces, and written custom C++ extensions to expose
internal features `libnix-c` could only dream of!
## 💛💜🖤 Usage
Below is an example of how Nixide can be used to locally build a NixOS system
from a `flake.nix` and remotely deploy it. This is **not** an easy thing
to do with the `libnix` API by default.
```rs
use nixide::*;
fn main() -> Result<(), NixideError> {
// open the default store: `/nix/store`
let storeref = Store::default()?;
// initialise the Nix evaluator with default settings
let eval_state = EvalState::default(storeref)?;
// get a flake reference to `/etc/nixos/flake.nix`
let flakeref = FlakeRefBuilder::new("/etc/nixos", eval_state)
.allow_dirty(true)
.warn_dirty(true)
.build()?;
// lock the flake and build the system configuration
let out_path: StorePath = flakeref
.lock()?
.outputs()?
.assert_type(NixType::Attrs)?
.get("nixosConfigurations.MY_HOSTNAME")
.map(|system: NixThunk| {
system
.force_eval()?
.assert_type(NixType::Path)?
.into_store_path()
})
.expect("Flake does not provide `MY_HOSTNAME`")?;
// copy the local build to a remote system
// NOTE: this assumes an ssh-agent can supply a key for us, otherwise
// NOTE: use the syntax: `ssh://dobutterfliescry.net?ssh-key=/path/to/my/key`
let remote_storeref = Store::open("ssh://dobutterfliescry.net")?;
out_path
.copy_closure_to(remote_storeref)?;
.as_nixos_system()?
.set_boot_target()?
.activate()?;
}
```
## Credits
Thanks so much to [@NotAShelf](https://github.com/NotAShelf) for maintaining their [nix-bindings](https://github.com/NotAShelf/nix-bindings) repository.
And especially [Robert Hensing](https://github.com/roberth) and the [nixops4 team](https://github.com/nixops4) for their [nix-bindings-rust](https://github.com/nixops4/nix-bindings-rust) repository.
