Nix/NixOS are great for documenting system configurations/models, but the long evaluation times make for slow feed back loops.

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?

  
  
    nix
  
  
  { ... }:

{
  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.

#linux