Use Without Flakes

Den is Flake-Agnostic

Den does not require Nix flakes. It works with:

• Nix flakes + flake-parts (most common)
• Nix flakes without flake-parts
• No flakes at all (stable Nix + npins or fetchTarball)

Without Flakes

Use flake-compat to evaluate Den from a non-flake setup:

default.nix

let
  flake = import (fetchTarball {
    url = "https://github.com/edolstra/flake-compat/archive/...tar.gz";
  }) { src = ./.; };
in
  flake.outputs

See the noflake template for a complete working example with npins.

Without Flake-Parts

Den provides its own minimal flake option when flake-parts is not present. Simply import inputs.den.flakeModule:

let
  denCfg = (lib.evalModules {
    modules = [
      (import-tree ./modules)
      inputs.den.flakeModule
    ];
    specialArgs = { inherit inputs; };
  }).config;
in {
  nixosConfigurations.igloo =
    denCfg.flake.nixosConfigurations.igloo;
}

With Flake-Parts

The standard setup — Den integrates seamlessly:

{
  outputs = inputs:
    inputs.flake-parts.lib.mkFlake { inherit inputs; }
      (inputs.import-tree ./modules);

  inputs = {
    den.url = "github:vic/den";
    flake-aspects.url = "github:vic/flake-aspects";
    import-tree.url = "github:vic/import-tree";
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixpkgs-unstable";
    flake-parts.url = "github:hercules-ci/flake-parts";
  };
}

The Dendritic Module

For flake-parts users who want automatic Den + flake-aspects setup:

imports = [ inputs.den.flakeModules.dendritic ];

This auto-configures flake-file inputs for den and flake-aspects.

Minimal Dependencies

Den’s only hard dependency is flake-aspects. Everything else is optional:

Dependency	Required?	Purpose
flake-aspects	Yes	Aspect composition
import-tree	Optional	Auto-import module directories
flake-parts	Optional	Flake structuring
nixpkgs	Optional	Only if building NixOS/HM configs
home-manager	Optional	Only if using HM integration