Elpe, a config-as-code build system written in OCaml+Rust

Community
1

I just released the first version of Elpe, a build system designed as a blend of Nix and Ubuntu.

It uses OCaml for the frontend, and communicates with a Rust backend via gRPC.

Blog post about it

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2

Cool project, but after reading the blog post and readme and looking at the examples, i still feel like i didn’t quite “get it”.

It’s not super clear why I, a nix/nixos user, would use this.

3

If you are a happy Nix user, you don’t need this. This is mostly meant for:

  • security-sensitive applications: recent events in Nix convinced me to look for other solutions. Anduril, Devenv, various CVEs.
  • things packaged primarily for Ubuntu, like some SoCs.
  • larger organisations trying to structure their workflows.
4

Out of curiosity, have you looked into 0install? It seems very similar to this project.

5

I do know about 0install, but I don’t see how it is similar to Elpe, other than also being a package installer. Elpe is really more like Nix using primarily Ubuntu packages.