Declarative, composable, and reproducible services for Nix development environment, as a [process-compose-flake](https://github.com/Platonic-Systems/process-compose-flake) module (based on [flake-parts](https://flake.parts)). Enabling users to have NixOS-like service on MacOS and Linux.
With `services-flake`, we aim to solve the following problems:
- Run external services like databases, Redis, etc. natively across platforms.
- Enable users to configure multiple instances of these external services.
- Provide project-specific service configuration and data isolation.
Consider a scenario where we are juggling two projects, located at `~/code/foo` and `~/code/bar`. The `foo` project integrates postgres and nginx, while `bar` encompasses postgres, pgAdmin, and kafka. It's crucial that the postgres data remains segregated across these projects. Additionally, the `bar` project is designed to facilitate multiple instances of postgres. Both projects are equipped with a flake app, streamlining the launch of their respective service stacks. Consequently, anyone using a Linux or macOS system can effortlessly clone either project and execute `nix run .#services` to activate the full suite of services without the need for manual configuration.
The `dataDir` of these services tend to take *relative* paths, which are usually relative to the project root. As such, when you run these services using `nix run`, their data files are created relative to whichever directory you are in. If you want these data files to always reside relative to the project directory, instead of using `nix run` consider wrapping the process-compose packages in script, via either [mission-control](https://community.flake.parts/mission-control) module or a [justfile](https://just.systems/). The example uses the latter.
Thanks to [the devenv project](https://github.com/cachix/devenv/tree/main/src/modules/services) on which much of our services implementation is based on.
This is currently not possible (nor prioritized by the devenv project), which is why we must create our own services. See <https://github.com/cachix/devenv/issues/75>
