In reply to @palo:xaos.space

All machines have a very similar base setup, and updates should be pulled from the cache, to avoid uploading 50 times the same closures from my office to the data center.

(I answered before you asked :D)

(and use the buildOnTarget option)

Or I push always all closures on a differnt build server.

Alright, next try to get this formatted correctly...

I recently updated to colmena 0.4.0 and cannot deploy from my Mac anymore:

~/.co/nixpkgs main ▷ nix develop -c colmena apply --on elara
[INFO ] Using flake: git+file:///Users/markuscisler/.config/nixpkgs
[INFO ] Enumerating nodes...
error:
       … while calling the 'attrNames' builtin

         at «string»:1:209:

            1| with builtins; let assets = getFlake "path:/tmp/nix-shell.9futSw/colmena-assets-0CsIT0?lastModified=1687506045&narHash=sha256-6Mfqk77CvYUqLBAWSiOuxaeT%2Bi2EF06vZHsFgILLuFU%3D"; hive = assets.processFlake; in attrNames hive.nodes
             |                                                                                                                                                                                                                 ^

       … while evaluating the attribute 'nodes'

         at /nix/store/vfamvq9dh5qiz0b3f6pbkkf77kqkmpr8-source/eval.nix:186:3:

          185|
          186|   nodes = listToAttrs (map (name: { inherit name; value = evalNode name (configsFor name); }) nodeNames);
             |   ^
          187|   toplevel =         lib.mapAttrs (_: v: v.config.system.build.toplevel) nodes;

       (stack trace truncated; use '--show-trace' to show the full trace)

       error: attribute 'currentSystem' missing

       at /nix/store/b90clwdlidf3s95m73jsby3ikfa56h91-source/pkgs/top-level/impure.nix:17:43:

           16|   # (build, in GNU Autotools parlance) platform.
           17|   localSystem ? { system = args.system or builtins.currentSystem; }
             |                                           ^
           18|
[ERROR] -----
[ERROR] Operation failed with error: Child process exited with error code: 1
Hint: Backtrace available - Use `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace

The relevant parts from my flake.nix are:

      colmena = {
        meta = {
          specialArgs = { inherit inputs; };

          nixpkgs = import inputs.nixpkgs-stable { };
          nodeNixpkgs = {
            kerala = import inputs.nixpkgs-2305 { };
          };
        };
        defaults = import ./nixos/remote-defaults;

        elara = { name, nodes, ... }: {
          deployment = {
            buildOnTarget = true;
            #targetHost = "192.168.10.2";
            targetHost = "100.66.68.66";
          };
          nixpkgs.system = "x86_64-linux";
          imports = [ ./machines/elara.nix ];
        };
      };

Any hints on what is going on here?

Hello folks; I just heard about Colmena today over at #nixops:nixos.org. I'm currently trying to evaluate whether its the right fit for my usecase (deploying a small number of VPS servers with the hopes of eventually scaling up).

What was the motivation of Colmena? I see its stateless, like Morph, which is a big plus for me. But what advantages does it have over Morph and NixOps?

Hello folks!

I just heard about Colmena today over at #nixops:nixos.org. I'm currently trying to evaluate whether its the right fit for my usecase (deploying a small number of VPS servers with the hopes of eventually scaling up).

What was the motivation of Colmena? I see its stateless, like Morph, which is a big plus for me. But what advantages does it have over Morph and NixOps?