Flake Templates

A collection of starter Nix flake projects, kept in one repository so they can be initialised with a single nix flake init invocation.

Available templates

Name	Description
default	Minimal starter flake for a multi-system project. Targets x86_64-linux, aarch64-linux and aarch64-darwin using the eachSystem style and tracks nixos-unstable. Ships with a placeholder hello package — swap it out for your own.
docker-image	Starter flake for argunix-compatible OCI images. Linux-only (x86_64-linux, aarch64-linux). Defines the same hello image twice — once against glibc, once musl-static — to demonstrate how small Nix-built images can get. Comes with a NixOS-VM integration test (docker load + docker run), gated to x86_64-linux.

Usage

In an empty directory, initialise the default starter:

nix flake init -t github:applicative-systems/templates

Or pick a specific template by name:

nix flake init -t github:applicative-systems/templates#default

Then build it:

nix build

The default template ships with pkgs.hello purely as a placeholder so the flake builds out of the box. Open flake.nix and replace it with your own package, devShell, NixOS module, or whatever you're actually building.

To build for a specific system explicitly:

nix build .#packages.aarch64-darwin.default
nix build .#packages.x86_64-linux.default
nix build .#packages.aarch64-linux.default

Formatting and linting

This repository is wired up with treefmt-nix. Format everything in place:

nix fmt

Check formatting without modifying files (also runs in CI via nix flake check):

nix flake check

The configured formatters/linters are nixfmt, deadnix, statix, prettier, shellcheck and shfmt.

How templates are validated

Each template is wired up as a path: flake input on the top-level flake.nix (with inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs" to dedupe). Its default package is then re-exported under checks.<system>.template-<name>, so nix flake check evaluates the template's outputs for every supported system and builds the host-system one. End users initialising the template via nix flake init are unaffected — they get a clean tree without any parent lockfile baggage.

Adding a new template

1. Create a new sub-directory containing a flake.nix (and any supporting files).
2. Register it in the top-level flake.nix under templates.<name> with a path and a description.
3. Wire it up for CI by adding a template-<name> input pointing at the sub-directory and a matching checks.<system>.template-<name> entry.
4. Document it in the table above.