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You mean like https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/NixOS_Containers ?

There is also https://microvm-nix.github.io/microvm.nix/ if you want increased isolation.

I can recommend MicroVM.nix, since it allows for multiple VM runtimes like QEMU, Firecracker, etc.

There's also nixos-shell for ad-hoc virtual machines: https://github.com/mic92/nixos-shell

Can you do those ad-hoc though? I was looking into this too. I feel like it requires a system config change, apply, and then you need to do container start + machinectl login to actually get a shell.

That's definitely what I want... most of the time.

Yes, NixOS containers can be run in:

* declarative mode, where your guest config is defined within your host config, or

* imperative mode, where your guest NixOS config is defined in a separate file. You can choose to reuse config between host and guest config files, of course.

It sounds like you want imperative containers. Here's the docs: https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/#sec-imperative-contai...

Oh I totally missed that!

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