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Introduction

You can create custom workflows not covered by the builtin makes.nix configuration options.

Locate in the root of your project:

$ cd /path/to/my/project

Create a directory structure. In this case: makes/example.

$ mkdir -p makes/example

We will place in this directory all the source code for the custom workflow called example.

Create a main.nix file inside makes/example.

Our goal is to create a bash script that prints Hello from makes!, so we are going to write the following function:

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# /path/to/my/project/makes/example/main.nix
{
  makeScript,
  ...
}:
makeScript {
  entrypoint = "echo Hello from Makes!";
  name = "hello-world";
}

Now run makes!

  • List all available outputs: $ m .

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    Outputs list for project: /path/to/my/project
  /example

  • Build and run the output: $ m . /example

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    Hello from Makes!

Makes will automatically recognize as outputs all main.nix files under the makes/ directory in the root of the project. This "magic" makes/ directory can be configured via the extendingMakesDirs option.

You can create any directory structure you want. Output names will me mapped in an intuitive way:

main.nix position Output name Invocation command
/path/to/my/project/makes/main.nix outputs."/" $ m . /
/path/to/my/project/makes/example/main.nix outputs."/example" $ m . /example
/path/to/my/project/makes/other/example/main.nix outputs."/other/example" $ m . /other/example

Makes offers you a few building blocks for you to reuse.

Let's start from the basics.