Usage with Flakes
Installation
To quickly try Colmena out, use the following command to enter an ephemeral environment with the latest development version of colmena:
nix shell github:zhaofengli/colmena
To install Colmena to the user profile, use the following command:
nix-env -if https://github.com/zhaofengli/colmena/tarball/main
You can also add github:zhaofengli/colmena as an input in your Flake and add the colmena package to your devShell.
Unstable Binary Cache
A public binary cache is available at https://colmena.cachix.org, courtesy of Cachix. This binary cache contains unstable versions of Colmena built by GitHub Actions.
Basic Configuration
Colmena reads the colmena output in your Flake.
Here is a short example:
{
inputs = {
nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
};
outputs = { nixpkgs, ... }: {
colmena = {
meta = {
nixpkgs = import nixpkgs {
system = "x86_64-linux";
overlays = [];
};
};
host-a = { name, nodes, pkgs, ... }: {
boot.isContainer = true;
time.timeZone = nodes.host-b.config.time.timeZone;
};
host-b = {
deployment = {
targetHost = "somehost.tld";
targetPort = 1234;
targetUser = "luser";
};
boot.isContainer = true;
time.timeZone = "America/Los_Angeles";
};
};
};
}
The full set of deployment options can be found here.
You can also check out the example in the main tutorial for some inspiration.
Now you are ready to use Colmena! To build the configuration:
colmena build
To build and deploy to all nodes:
colmena apply
Direct Flake Evaluation (Experimental)
By default, Colmena uses nix-instantiate to evaluate your flake which does not work purely on Nix 2.21+, necessitating the use of --impure.
There is experimental support for evaluating flakes directly with nix eval, enabled via --experimental-flake-eval.
To use this new evaluation mode, your flake needs to depend on Colmena itself as an input and expose a new output called colmenaHive:
{
inputs = {
+ # ADDED: Colmena input
+ colmena.url = "github:zhaofengli/colmena";
# ... Rest of configuration ...
};
outputs = { self, colmena, ... }: {
+ # ADDED: New colmenaHive output
+ colmenaHive = colmena.lib.makeHive self.outputs.colmena;
# Your existing colmena output
colmena = {
# ... Rest of configuration ...
};
};
}