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Getting Started

Ready to create your own Clan and manage a fleet of machines? Follow these simple steps to get started.

By the end of this guide, you'll have a fresh NixOS configuration ready to push to one or more machines. You'll create a new Git repository and a flake, and all you need is at least one machine to push to. This is the easiest way to begin, and we recommend you to copy your existing configuration into this new setup!

Prerequisites

Clan requires Nix to be installed on your system. Run the following command to install Nix:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- install

If you have previously installed Nix, make sure experimental-features = nix-command flakes is present in ~/.config/nix/nix.conf or /etc/nix/nix.conf. If this is not the case, please add it to ~/.config/nix/nix.conf.

If you run NixOS the nix binary is already installed.

You will also need to enable the nix-command and flakes experimental features in your configuration.nix:

{ nix.settings.experimental-features = [ "nix-command" "flakes" ]; }

Clan requires Nix to be installed on your system. Run the following command to install Nix:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- install

If you have previously installed Nix, make sure experimental-features = nix-command flakes is present in ~/.config/nix/nix.conf or /etc/nix/nix.conf. If this is not the case, please add it to ~/.config/nix/nix.conf.

Step 1: Add Clan CLI to Your Shell

Add the Clan CLI into your development workflow:

nix shell git+https://git.clan.lol/clan/clan-core#clan-cli --refresh

You can find reference documentation for the clan CLI program here.

Alternatively you can check out the help pages directly: 

clan --help

Step 2: Initialize Your Project

If you want to migrate an existing project, follow this guide.

Set the foundation of your Clan project by initializing it by running:

clan flakes create my-clan

This command creates the flake.nix and .clan-flake files for your project. It will also generate files from a default template, to help show general clan usage patterns.

Step 3: Verify the Project Structure

Ensure that all project files exist by running:

cd my-clan
tree

This should yield the following:

.
├── flake.nix
├── machines
│   ├── jon
│   │   ├── configuration.nix
│   │   └── hardware-configuration.nix
│   └── sara
│       ├── configuration.nix
│       └── hardware-configuration.nix
└── modules
    └── shared.nix

5 directories, 9 files
Recommended way of sourcing the clan CLI tool

The default template adds the clan CLI tool to the development shell. This means that you can access the clan CLI tool directly from the folder you are in right now.

In the my-clan directory, run the following command:

nix develop

This will ensure the clan CLI tool is available in your shell environment.

To automatically add the clan CLI tool to your environment without having to run nix develop every time, we recommend setting up direnv.

clan machines list

jon
sara

Success

You just successfully bootstrapped your first Clan.