# Toki's Nix Flake Template Repository

This is my personal collection of Nix flake templates for various programming
languages and build systems.

## Motivation

There already exists a [semi-official repository of flake
templates](https://github.com/NixOS/templates), so why make my own?

I have a few different reasons:

- **Comprehensiveness:** The official template repository is rather small and
  doesn't have most of the templates I would actually want to use.
- **Consistency:** The templates in the official repository are contributed by
  community members, and there's very little stylistic or structural consistency
  between them.
- **Preference:** The structure of a flake can be very opinionated, and most of
  the official flake templates are rather poorly constructed by my standards,
  often not bothering to follow established best practices.

## Usage

Flake templates are used with the `nix flake init` command:

```sh
nix flake init -t git+https://git.tokinanpa.dev/toki/templates#<template>
```

Replace `<template>` with the template you want to use. In the simplest case,
this is just the name of the programming language you want to use; the
repository will pick a recommended default template for that language.

If you want more control over the generated repository, you may select a
specific template instead. Templates names are organized by underscore-separated
*fields*; the number of fields may very depending on the language, but typically
there are three or four:

1. The programming language
2. The build system used to compile/package the repository
3. The Nix library/evaluation system used in the flake itself
4. (Optional) Additional differences in project structure

For example, the `python_pyproject_nixpkgs_cli` template generates a Python
repository packaged in Pyproject format where the flake uses Nixpkgs' standard
derivation builders (`buildPythonPackage`) and the repository exposes a CLI application.