Can We Nixify Lemmy's Dev Environment?

cross-posted from: infosec.pub/post/9428674

I had the (perhaps foolishly ambitious) idea of creating a rolling fork of Lemmy with the intent of modifying the codebase for use in an open source pub sub implementation of retail inventory. But I have to get standard Lemmy working first…and I like to use Nix for everything I do in the dev world (where feasible).

So, I forked the repo and was immediately brought into dev environment hell.

They only offer a choice between:

A.) Docker B.) Ansible C.) Building from scratch.

Two hours of fighting with the scratch build instructions and I eventually had to admit defeat due to some vague dependencies (and general malaise). Though I have completely flakified my Purescript and Haskell dev environments, I have found Rust to be a lot more challenging even on simple projects.

Anyway, I decided to come here to ask: **How easy would it be to flakify the Lemmy repo to add a fourth build option for those of us in the Nix world? **

Can I reference the build instructions from nixpkgs to get close to my intended goal? I need all of the help I can get. Be as pedantic or defeatist as you will. I currently have no skin in this game and merely want to help the Lemmy devs welcome people that are more nixy like myself (if nothing else).