I still haven't fully mastered #nixos yet but am close to a point where I feel comfortable distributing software with it. I still really like the purity it forces me to work with although its often a push back.

the ssb4nix repo that @clacke started has an upstream branch that could be used to install scuttlebot@11.4.2 and #git-ssb into an nix-env like this:

git clone https://git.scuttlebot.io/%252iMwYBtLVYRJ1Vbdm76K4aEpph8WC59GHmz7K9eT%2FFo%3D.sha256 ssb4nix
cd ssb4nix && git checkout upstream
nix-env -f . -qa # list the software that this supplies
nix-enf -f . -i scuttlebot git-ssb

note: git-ssb still has side-effect dependencies on nodejs-8 because of how the helpers are invoked but this should be easy to fix.

If there was a way to fetch someBranch.tar.gz from a git-ssb server this could be

nix-env -f http://some-git-ssb-host/%252iMwYBtLVYRJ1Vbdm76K4aEpph8WC59GHmz7K9eT%2FFo%3D.sha256/checkout?branch=upstream?as=archive -i scuttlebot git-ssb

of course, with lots of trust invovled but this would make deployment really nice. For me nix is similar to docker but with much more control over how the images are created.

I also tried to bundle patchfoo using --registry http://trusty-ssbnpmreg but ran into this and I hope this isn't node2nix specific magic but it smells a little weird...

info attempt registry request try #1 at 4:01:18 PM
http request GET http://apu42.home:8043/git-ssb
http 200 http://apu42.home:8043/git-ssb
Unknown integrity string: sha256-IZruh57+qZt+EWybSVkAS80/q58AkfCxZoIyGojVVMc=`

cc @cel

I'll try to get sbot and git-ssb into the main nixpkgs tree but this will likely take some time as the PR backlog is horrendous, I hear.

I'll make a development channel, like the ssb4nix repo for ssb related projects. In it we can have scuttle-shell and patchbay, etc. which seem to be problematic to introduce just because they add many node packages, which I find only somewhat understandable. I still want to use its packaging philosophy since it would allow me to easiyly switch between versions.

TIL:

with import <nixpkgs> { }; someNewTool.overrideDerivation (drv: { src = ./myUrl; })

o/ this lets you use a local copy myUrl of the code for a project (someNewTool could be systrayhelper). the shell can then be used to built it and run tests while keeping the setup nix expressions in the nixpkgs repo.

reading more of node2nix readme, espc Wrapping or patching the code or any of its dependencies was also very educational.

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Configuration_Collection is another good place for a deepdive into different positbilites of system configuration.

@cryptix

Unknown integrity string: sha256-IZruh57+qZt+EWybSVkAS80/q58AkfCxZoIyGojVVMc=

Here's a patch to node2nix that might fix this:
node2nix-sha256.diff

Generating a tarball from a git-ssb repo would be possible to implement…

Generating a tarball from a git-ssb repo would be possible to implement…

I hope you don’t take everything I say as a feature request... :) I just thought I’d mention it. I can just as well use ssb-websites for this.