My knowledge of the functional ecosystem is mostly diddly, but maybe there’s a way to speed it up? Ignore all module and package imports and piece together a minimal evaluation perhaps?

{ ... }:

{
  imports = [
    <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/programs/git.nix>
    <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/security/auditd.nix>
    <nixpkgs/nixos/modules/services/databases/postgresql.nix>
  ];

  nixpkgs.overlays = [
    (_: pkgs: {
      cpio = pkgs.callPackage <nixpkgs/pkgs/tools/archivers/cpio/default.nix> { };
    })
  ];
}

If that goes anywhere, maybe that’s an article, but I’m fairly certain someone must have tried something like this already.

The peculiar thing about the nix ecosystem, is that the easiest way I’ve been able to convince someone to try nix is to first show nix-env. Then apply the idea of declarative package management. Not too long after that they’re on NixOS or using nix flakes, and have catapulted far past my own knowledge of nix.

Only recently did I discover that in the wider ecosystem, using nix-env is a big no-no — that’s sort of interesting.