Ross ROSS = Recommend OSS · open-source software intelligence for agents

nix-community/colmena

A simple, stateless NixOS deployment tool [maintainer=@zhaofengli, @stepbrobd, @NickCao] observed · 2026-08-28

github.com/nix-community/colmena · homepage · Rust · MIT (permissive) observed · 2026-08-28

Health v2 · maintenance only

67/100

  • Activity 98
  • Release rhythm 8
  • Longevity 100
How is this computed?

round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.

  • gap_med: n/a
  • age_days: 2086
  • days_rel: n/a
  • days_push: 13
  • n_releases_24m: 0

Full methodology

Adoption not part of the score

2326 stars · 112 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Colmena is a simple, stateless NixOS deployment tool written in Rust, modeled after NixOps and morph. It wraps Nix commands like nix-instantiate and nix-copy-closure to build and activate configurations on remote hosts in parallel, with support for Nix Flakes.

Use cases

  • deploy nixos configurations to multiple servers
  • parallel remote deployment of nixos hosts
  • replace nixops with a stateless deployment tool
  • apply nix flake configurations to remote machines over ssh
  • manage a fleet of nixos servers declaratively
  • select hosts by tag when deploying nixos

When to choose

  • you manage multiple NixOS hosts and want declarative, parallel deployment without state files
  • you already use Nix Flakes and want first-class flake support
  • you want a lightweight wrapper over plain Nix commands instead of a heavyweight orchestrator

When to avoid

  • you need multi-cloud provisioning or resource creation, not just configuration deployment
  • your servers do not run NixOS or Nix
  • you need rollback orchestration or secrets management beyond what Nix provides

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

deployment configuration-management cli developer-tools infrastructure-as-code self-hosted rust cli nixos nix declarative-deployment ssh flakes remote-builds devops automation linux macos

2 sources

Member repositories

RepositoryRoleHealth v2
nix-community/colmenamain67

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="nix-community/colmena")

Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem