NixOS native deployment of La Suite

[RaitoBezarius]

NixOS is a popular distribution containing the service recipe for many services (e.g. https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/release-notes#sec-release-24.11-new-modules), NixOS can be configured natively "as code" akin to what people does with Kubernetes, Ansible or Terraform as an external tool.

For the past years, the Nix ecosystem has seen tremendous maturation via NLnet funding (https://nlnet.nl/project) on various aspects: security, reliability, etc.

More recently, NixOS has been as a base platform for a pilot to host Fediverse workloads in the https://fediversity.eu/ project.

Drawing an analogy from this, La Suite numérique could aim to follow a similar path, e.g. offer tools to host La Suite for any size to any operator relying on the Nix semantics.

For this, what needs to be done is to package all of La Suite numérique in nixpkgs as packages and NixOS modules then write some documentation on the different scenarios of deployment: small scale deployment / large scale deployment.

Some work has already started in:

• 📦️(nix) init nix packaging for docs docs#883
• python3Packages.brevo-python: init at 1.1.2; python3Packages.june-analytics-python: init at unstable-2022-07-26; python3Packages.livekit-protocol: init at 1.0.2; python3Packages.livekit-api: init at 1.0.2 NixOS/nixpkgs#400817
• nixos/livekit: init, nixos/lk-jwt-service: init NixOS/nixpkgs#399627 (intended for Element Call but can be used for Meet as Livekit is the common base)

The final goal could be to have:

services.lasuite = {
    enable = true;
    domain = "my.base.domain.for.la.suite";
};

and have a state-of-the-art hardened and up-to-date La Suite deployment.

Obviously, we could also envision people doing mix'n'match:

services.lasuite = {
    enable = true;
    domain = "my.base.domain.for.la.suite";
    components.people.enable = false;
    components.find.enable = false;
};

to disable certain components of La Suite.

@soyouzpanda has been driving some of that work and certain members of the Nix community has been providing insights and are eager to see La Suite numérique landing in this packaging form. :)

[rriemann]

This is interesting. Can you please give the specific links to the involvement of NLnet and where fediversity is working on a mastodon nixpkgs?

[RaitoBezarius]

This is interesting. Can you please give the specific links to the involvement of NLnet and where fediversity is working on a mastodon nixpkgs?

https://git.fediversity.eu/Fediversity/meta/src/branch/main/meeting-notes
https://nlnet.nl/fediversity/

mastodon nixpkgs

This is not a concept that makes a lot of sense ;-) — Nixpkgs already contains various Fediversity software: PeerTube, Mastodon, Misskey, etc. (see https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#module-services-akkoma for examples).

[soyouzpanda]

Some work has already started in:

You can add suitenumerique/meet#497 😁

[rriemann]

You propose here to make it easier to install lasuite components on machines running NixOS.

What is the motivation of this project? If the motivation would be to increase the adoption of LaSuite, then the assumption you imply here would be that many possible customers are likely to have NixOS already or feel that NixOS is the easiest way to setup new machines.

[RaitoBezarius]

You propose here to make it easier to install lasuite components on machines running NixOS.

What is the motivation of this project? If the motivation would be to increase the adoption of LaSuite, then the assumption you imply here would be that many possible customers are likely to have NixOS already or feel that NixOS is the easiest way to setup new machines.

NixOS has a very large user base of self hosters (and is also used in various companies' production as the base OS), so it's about making La Suite available to them. There's already multiple interest of a La Suite deployment using NixOS as of now.

The adoption is certainly a thing, but it's just yet another packaging form, e.g. a Docker container, for La Suite that is quite used by a non trivial amount of users.