nixos-and-flakes-book/docs/best-practices/simplify-nixos-related-commands.md

Simplify NixOS-related commands

I use Makefile to simplify NixOS-related commands, which is very convenient. You can also use other similar tools to do this job, here I will only introduce my usage as a reference.

My Makefile looks like this:

#
#  NOTE: Makefile's target name should not be the same as one of the file or directory in the current directory,
#    otherwise the target will not be executed!
#


############################################################################
#
#  Nix commands related to the local machine
#
############################################################################

deploy:
	nixos-rebuild switch --flake . --use-remote-sudo

debug:
	nixos-rebuild switch --flake . --use-remote-sudo --show-trace --verbose

update:
	nix flake update

history:
	nix profile history --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/system

gc:
	# remove all generations older than 7 days
	sudo nix profile wipe-history --profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/system  --older-than 7d

	# garbage collect all unused nix store entries
	sudo nix store gc --debug

############################################################################
#
#  Idols, Commands related to my remote distributed building cluster
#
############################################################################

add-idols-ssh-key:
	ssh-add ~/.ssh/ai-idols

aqua: add-idols-ssh-key
	nixos-rebuild --flake .#aquamarine --target-host aquamarine --build-host aquamarine switch --use-remote-sudo

aqua-debug: add-idols-ssh-key
	nixos-rebuild --flake .#aquamarine --target-host aquamarine --build-host aquamarine switch --use-remote-sudo --show-trace --verbose

ruby: add-idols-ssh-key
	nixos-rebuild --flake .#ruby --target-host ruby --build-host ruby switch --use-remote-sudo

ruby-debug: add-idols-ssh-key
	nixos-rebuild --flake .#ruby --target-host ruby --build-host ruby switch --use-remote-sudo --show-trace --verbose

kana: add-idols-ssh-key
	nixos-rebuild --flake .#kana --target-host kana --build-host kana switch --use-remote-sudo

kana-debug: add-idols-ssh-key
	nixos-rebuild --flake .#kana --target-host kana --build-host kana switch --use-remote-sudo --show-trace --verbose

idols: aqua ruby kana

idols-debug: aqua-debug ruby-debug kana-debug

Save the above Makefile to the root directory of the flake, and then we can use make deploy to deploy the configuration to the local machine, and use make idols to deploy the configuration to all my remote servers.