In reply to @zhaofeng:zhaofeng.li
It also provides a clear upgrade path for users using legacy hive.nix to flakes

Also regarding upgrading to flakes, note that Colmena can auto-call if hive.nix evaluates to a function, allowing you to do things like this:

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> { system = "x86_64-linux"; } }: # or how you pin your nixpkgs
{
  meta = { ... };
}

and importing it like outputs.colmena = import ./hive.nix { pkgs = ...; }; in your flake. You can then deploy with either flake.nix and hive.nix during your transition period.

In reply to @phaer:matrix.org

Jane Jasperous:
Does this work for you?

colmena.my-host = { name, nodes, ... }:
{
   imports = [ self.nixosConfigurations.my-host ];
}; 

(if you get an error that deployment options are undefined, import colmena.nixosModules.deploymentOptions in your nixosConfiguration)

        deployment.allowLocalDeployment = true;
        nixpkgs.system = self.nixosConfigurations.x2100.config.nixpkgs.system;
        imports = self.nixosConfigurations.x2100.extraArgs.modules ;
      };

colmena.node-a = {
        deployment.allowLocalDeployment = true;
        nixpkgs.system = self.nixosConfigurations.x2100.config.nixpkgs.system;
        imports = self.nixosConfigurations.x2100.extraArgs.modules ;
      };

nixosConfigurations.x2100 = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      specialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
      modules = [
          module-a
     ];
};

colmena.node-a = {
        deployment.allowLocalDeployment = true;
        nixpkgs.system = self.nixosConfigurations.node-a.config.nixpkgs.system;
        imports = self.nixosConfigurations.node-a.extraArgs.modules ;
      };

nixosConfigurations.node-a = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      specialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
      modules = [
          module-a
     ];
};

colmena.node-a = {
        deployment.allowLocalDeployment = true;
        nixpkgs.system = self.nixosConfigurations.node-a.config.nixpkgs.system;
        imports = self.nixosConfigurations.node-a.extraArgs.modules ;
      };

nixosConfigurations.node-a = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      specialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
      modules = [
          module-a
          #inputs.colmena.nixosModules.deploymentOptions
     ];
};

In reply to @janejasperous:one.ems.host
Im also realize while playing with colmena/nixosConfigurations outputs that colmena are impure builds. Is there some option to force pure builds??

In reply to @pacien:pacien.net
hello, is it possible to define specialArgs per node? I'd like to "inject" some attributes which depend on different values of system

In reply to @winterqt:nixos.dev
but i'm curious why impure is passed by default, i only see it mentioned there and in a test, cc Zhaofeng Li

In reply to @zhaofeng:zhaofeng.li
Apart from specialArgs, there are also normal arguments. For example, you can set the _module.args.someArg option in node configs.

thank you, that works!

By the way, what is meta.nixpkgs used for? Which system should be set for importing nixpkgs there? Should it match the platform of the machine running colmena?

In reply to @pacien:pacien.net

thank you, that works!

By the way, what is meta.nixpkgs used for? Which system should be set for importing nixpkgs there? Should it match the platform of the machine running colmena?

In reply to @pacien:pacien.net
ok! I'm setting this with nodeNixpkgs explicitly for each node. Would it be possible to make nixpkgs not mandatory in this case?

In reply to @winterqt:nixos.dev
but i'm curious why impure is passed by default, i only see it mentioned there and in a test, cc Zhaofeng Li

Currently, there is an eval.nix that takes a normal hive.nix or a flake URI, evaluated in a normal impure context. If a flake URI is passed, then it's fetched using builtins.getFlake.

And this setup (importing a file outside of a flake context) sadly doesn't work in pure evaluation.