Post Syndicated from jzb original https://lwn.net/Articles/1094226/

Nix flakes are an
experimental feature of the Nix package-management
tool designed to build projects in a more self-contained and reproducible
way. Despite the feature’s experimental status, it has become increasingly
popular for open-source projects to publish flake.nix files that offer
predefined development environments and build automation even when those
repositories may not offer an upstream package or module for the NixOS Linux distribution. Although
Nix flakes have a complicated history, and the path for stabilization is
uncertain, flakes can provide useful capabilities for projects that choose to
include them.