Workflows

Workflows are all-encompassing NixOS modules for dictating how you interact with your computer/device/whatever. Basically, this is where certain things are set such as your GNOME desktop environment settings, your dolled up standalone window manager setup, or an oddball audio-only desktop interface. They are located in ./nixos/modules/workflows at the project root.

Workflows are defined under the namespace workflows where each workflow module is set to be declared and to be enabled at workflows.workflows.<name>.enable. For example, here’s how I would enable my imaginary GNOME desktop workflow. 

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:

{
  workflows.workflows.a-happy-gnome.enable = true;
}

Take note you cannot enable more than two workflows at any given time. 

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:

{
  # This would cause an assertion error.
  workflows.workflows = {
    a-happy-gnome.enable = true;
    knome.enable = true;
  };
}

You can get around this by setting workflows.disableLimit to true. However, this shouldn’t be taken lightly as workflow modules are very vast in scope and are expected to set system settings that can affect your hardware including…​

  • Enabling (and/or disabling) system services such as the preferred network manager.

  • Modifying the list of installed applications.

  • Setting up programs with custom configurations which could cause conflicts with the defaults (upstream or from nixpkgs) or with another workflow module.

foodogsquared
foodogsquared

By organizing the workflow modules this way, you can easily create your desktop rices without overlapping system settings. Bless the Nix module system!

foodogsquared
foodogsquared

Whether those rices are worth posting to Unix ricing communities is up to you though.

Ezran
Ezran

Whippersnappers with your "riced"-up systems…​

Designing a workflow module

There are a few guidelines to designing a workflow module which is already laid out in its respective README but as a reminder, let’s list it here.

  • All workflow modules should be under workflows.workflows.<name> namespace with an enable option.

  • No usage of the private modules. It is a public module, after all so it’ll make things messier. While we can conditionally set the configuration, it is pretty useless since we have the host-specific module structure.

  • No locale-related settings. Each user may have its own set of preferred locales and their setup so it is pretty much prohibited from setting any. The only related parts a workflow module can set is their preferred input method engine (IME) of choice. The rest of the locale settings is best configured from the host or its individual users.