Flake Commands

Here is some documentation for NIX Flakes commands

This set of 3 articles is a great source of info; https://www.tweag.io/blog/2020-05-25-flakes/

Using the flake

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake /path/to/flake.nix

When you update your flake.nix or configuration.nix you will need to run this command.

Updating the flake.lock file.

If you want to update your flake to use newer packages you will also need to update the lock file that is locking the packages to a specific version/revision.

sudo nix flake update

Alternatively you can update only a specific flake input like;

sudo nix flake lock --update-input nixpkgs

Nix flake show

This will show you a nice tree structure of the flake.nix file you are working with.

nix flake show .

Generating a flake.nix from a template

As an example.

nix flake init -t templates#simpleContainer

You can run this to see what templates exist.

nix flake show templates