A Gentle Introduction to the Nix Family

Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
—Alan Kay

Table of contents

• Introduction
• NixOS
  • Installation
    • Boot machine
    • Setup networking
    • Prepare disks
    • Install to disk
  • Configuration
• Nix
  • Strings
  • Numbers
  • Booleans
  • Lists
  • Sets
  • Paths
  • Functions
  • Let
  • With
  • Conditionals
  • File imports
• Nixpkgs
  • Installation
  • Usage
    • Git
    • Channels
    • Other commands
  • Configuration
  • Contributing
    • Updating an existing package
    • Submitting a new package
  • Notes
• Environments
  • System environment
  • User environment
  • Development environment
• Overlays
  • Overrides
  • New packages
• Closing remarks
• Bonus

Introduction

Ideas that change the way we do computing come rarely. A lot of the technology that we are using now are just re-hashes of old ones—layers upon layers of cosmetics enveloping old concepts. Entire product lines are based upon this lack of creativity and ingenuity. Old problems are not solved. Instead, these so-called innovative solutions merely pass around the problem while painting it with new shades, claiming that at least, they made it more colorful. This mentality harms progress in innumerable ways. This gives the false impression that solutions are actually being done. This creates a false sense of assurance of improvements.

Several years ago Eelco Dolstra wrote the seminal papers that described radical ways to deploy software. These papers effectively formed the cornerstones of Nix, a purely functional package manager language that solved the disease that plagued computing for a long time—poor package management. In this article I’ll talk about the Nix family, and how to use them to your advantage.

The $ symbol will be used to indicate the shell prompt for a regular user, while the # symbol will denote the shell for the root user. There are cases when the EUID of a command will be zero (0) due to the use of sudo.

NixOS

How many times have you had a broken system because you upgraded a software that other components depended on? How many late night stays have you had because you had to make an application work, because the new package that you installed broke it? How many times, when in frustration, you gave up repairing your system and just decided to re-install your system from scratch? Restoring data files are easy; restoring system configuration from the last working state, however, is a one-way ticket to hell.

NixOS is a Linux distribution that solves these problems by leveraging on the determinism of Nix and by using a single declarative configuration file that contains all settings and knobs in one place—/etc/nixos/configuration.nix. This file contains information about your filesystems, users, services, network configuration, input devices, kernel parameters, and more. This means that you can take a configuration.nix of someone, and have their exact system configuration! In NixOS you don’t have to fiddle around with the whole system manually for configuration that you want. You don’t have to use ad-hoc solutions to specify a desired configuration state. You don’t need to install additional software to manage system configuration.

NixOS does not follow the FHS, effectively preventing additional brain damage. This gives room for a lot of flexibility and ingenuity. It does not have /usr/ and /opt/. It does have /bin/ and /usr/bin/, which contains only sh and env, respectively—both of which are actually symlinks to the real programs somewhere in /nix/store/. The top-level location for system binaries—the ones installed explicitly by the administrator—are located in /run/current-system/sw/bin/ and /run/current-system/sw/sbin/. User-installed programs, on the other hand, are available at their respective m~/.nix-profile/bin/. These locations cannot be modified through normal means; dedicated programs must be used to write to these trees.

Installation

Installation of NixOS is straightforward. For bare-metal systems, download an installer from nixos.org/download. VM images are also available from that page. For my last installation, I installed with the following setup:

• UEFI
• USB boot
• Wi-Fi connection
• GUID Partition Table (GPT)
• LUKS over LVM

Boot machine

Boot from the USB drive in UEFI mode. On the login prompt, login as root.

Setup networking

Scan for available networks:

# nmcli d wifi list

Then, connect to the router of choice:

# nmcli d wifi con ROUTER name NAME password PASSWORD

Prepare disks

Create the partitions:

# gdisk /dev/sda
sda1: EF00 (EFI system), 512 MiB
sda2: 8E00 (Linux LVM), rest

Format /dev/sda1:

# mkfs.vfat -F 32 /dev/sda1

Create the physical volume:

# pvcreate /dev/sda2

Create the volume group:

# vgcreate vg /dev/sda2

Create the logical volumes:

# lvcreate -L 20G -n swap vg
# lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n root vg

Encrypt root:

# cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/vg/root
# cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/vg/root root

Format root:

# mkfs.ext4 -j -L root /dev/mapper/root

Format swap:

# mkswap -L swap /dev/vg/swap

Mount the filesystems:

# mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt
# mkdir /mnt/boot
# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

Enable swap:

# swapon /dev/vg/swap

Install to disk

Create the base config:

# nixos-generate-config --root /mnt

Edit the config file:

# nano /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix

To give you a headstart, you may use a trimmed-down version of my configuration, as follows. Replace the values as it suits you. All available configuration knobs are available here.

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:

{
  imports = [
      ./hardware-configuration.nix
  ];

  boot = {
    loader = {
      systemd-boot.enable = true;
      efi.canTouchEfiVariables = true;
    };

    initrd.availableKernelModules = [
      "xhci_pci"
      "ehci_pci"
      "ahci"
      "usb_storage"
      "sd_mod"
      "rtsx_pci_sdmmc"
    ];

    initrd.luks.devices = {
      "root" = {
        device = "/dev/vg/root";
        preLVM = false;
      };
    };

    cleanTmpDir = true;
  };

  fileSystems = {
    "/boot" = {
      device = "/dev/disk/by-uuid/D5FE-BECB";
      fsType = "vfat";
    };
    "/" = {
      device = "/dev/mapper/root";
      fsType = "ext4";
    };
  };

  swapDevices = [
    {
      device = "/dev/vg/swap";
    }
  ];

  networking = {
    hostName = "mehfoo";
    hostId = "7B1548AE";
    enableIPv6 = true;
    networkmanager.enable = true;
  };

  environment = {
    systemPackages = with pkgs; [ zsh ];
  };

  time.timeZone = "Asia/Manila";

  security.sudo = {
    enable = true;
    configFile = ''
      Defaults env_reset
      root ALL = (ALL:ALL) ALL
      %wheel ALL = (ALL) SETENV: NOPASSWD: ALL
    '';
  };

  services = {
    xserver = {
      autorun = true;
      defaultDepth = 24;
      enable = true;
      displayManager.lightdm.enable = true;
      desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;
      videoDrivers = [ "intel" ];
    };
  };

  users = {
    extraUsers.vakelo = {
      isNormalUser = true;
      uid = 1000;
      extraGroups = [ "wheel" "networkmanager" "docker" ];
    };
    defaultUserShell = "/run/current-system/sw/bin/zsh";
  };
}

If you skipped the nixos-generate-config step above, create the staging directory manually:

# mkdir -p /mnt/etc/nixos

You may save the file above with:

# curl -sSLo /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix https://goo.gl/ZTQcGs

A longer version is available with:

# curl -sSLo /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix https://goo.gl/K4P7l5

Replace the UUID of the disk with the one that you have. Use the command blkid to get the UUIDs. For the value of networking.hostID, use the following command:

# cksum /etc/machine-id | while read c rest; do printf "%x" $c; done

The above configuration specifies the following, among other things:

• It creates a user vakelo with full sudo access.
• It uses Plasma 5 as the desktop environment.
• It enables SSH.
• It specifies the LUKS parameters.

Install NixOS to the disk:

# nixos-install

This command will parse /etc/nixos/configuration.nix, making sure that there are no errors. This command will download all the necessary packages to match the specification.

When the installation completes, reboot your system:

# reboot

Configuration

After installation, updating your existing configuration is trivial. All you have to do is edit the configuration file then rebuild the system:

# nano /etc/nixos/configuration.nix
# nixos-rebuild switch

If you make a mistake, the system will notify you of it, instead of proceeding with an incorrect configuration. After the system has completed booting, switch to the console with Ctrl+Alt+F1, then login as root, then set a password for the user that we specified in configuration.nix:

# passwd vakelo

Exit the shell, switch to the graphical interface with Alt+F7, then login as vakelo.

Nix

The component that forms the heart of NixOS and Nixpkgs is the Nix language. It is a declarative language designed in mind to handle packages.

To make it easier to understand the language, let’s run nix repl:

$ nix repl

Next, let’s run it. You’ll be greeted with the version number, and the nix-repl prompt. At the time of writing, the latest stable version is 2.4:

Welcome to Nix 2.4. Type :? for help.

nix-repl>

Let’s try out some basic expressions.

Strings

Just like in other languages, strings evaluate to themselves:

nix-repl> "foo"
"foo"

To concatenate strings, use the + operator:

nix-repl> "foo" + "bar"
"foobar"

Another way to declare strings is to use two pairs of single quotes. Do not mistake it with the double quotes:

nix-repl> ''foo bar''
"foo bar"

The advantage of using '' over " is that allows the presence of " inside it:

nix-repl> ''"foo" "bar"''
"\"foo\" \"bar\"\"

The value that it then returns will be properly quoted. This is useful later when we’re going to build complex expressions.

To deference strings inside strings, use the ${name} form:

nix-repl> x = "foo"

nix-repl> y = "bar"

nix-repl> "${x} ${y}"
"foo bar"

nix-repl> ''${x} ${y}''
"foo bar"

Numbers

Basic arithmetic operations in Nix are included, with a small twist:

nix-repl> 6+2
8

nix-repl> 6-2
4

nix-repl> 6*2
12

nix-repl> 6/2
/home/vakelo/6/2

Oops! That wasn’t what we expected. Since Nix was designed with files and directories in mind, it made a special case that when a / character is surrounded by non-space characters, it interprets it as a directory path, resulting in an absolute path. To actually perform division, add at least one space before and after the / character:

nix-repl> 6 / 2
3

By the way, there are no floating point numbers in Nix. So, if you try to evaluate one, you’ll get:

nix-repl> 1.0
error: syntax error, unexpected INT, expecting ID or OR_KW or DOLLAR_CURLY or '"', at (string):1:3
'"'

The function builtins.div does essentially the same as /:

nix-repl> builtins.div 6 3
2

The difference, however, is that builtins.div can be applied partially:

nix-repl> (builtins.div 6)
«primop-app»

This expressions returns a closure of a partially applied function. We need another value to fully apply it:

nix-repl> (builtins.div 6) 3
2

We can even store the value of that partial application:

nix-repl> d = builtins.div 6

The = operator in Nix is used to bind values. In this example, it is used to define a partial application. To use that function:

nix-repl> d 3
2

Booleans

Truth- and falsehood are represented with true and false:

nix-repl> 1 < 2
true

nix-repl> 1 > 2
false

nix-repl> 1 == 1
true

nix-repl> "foo" == "foo"
true

nix-repl> "foo" < "bar"
false

nix-repl> false || true
true

nix-repl> false && true
false

Lists

Lists are heterogeneous types for containing serial values. Elements are separated by spaces:

nix-repl> [ 1 "foo" true ]
[ 1 "foo" true ]

To concatenate lists:

nix-repl> [ 1 "foo" true ] ++ [ false (6 / 2) ]
[ 1 "foo" true false 3 ]

To extract the head:

nix-repl> builtins.head ([ 1 "foo" true (6 / 2) ] ++ [ false (6 / 2) ])
1

To extract the tail:

nix-repl> builtins.tail ([ 1 "foo" true (6 / 2) ] ++ [ false (6 / 2) ])
[ "foo" true 3 false 3 ]

Lists are indexed starting at 0. To get the 1th element, use the builtins.elemAt operator:

nix-repl> builtins.elemAt [ 1 "foo" true ] 1
"foo"

Sets

An important data structure in Nix are sets. They are keyword-value pairs separated by semicolons:

nix-repl> { a = 0; b = "bar"; c = true; d = (6 / 2); }
{ a = 0; b = "kato"; c = true; d = 3; }

What makes sets different from lists is that extracting values from them are done by making name references. To extract the value of b, use the . operator:

nix-repl> { a = 0; b = "bar"; c = true; d = (6 / 2); }.b
"bar"

which is equivalent to:

nix-repl> { a = 0; b = "bar"; c = true; d = (6 / 2); }."b"
"bar"

To dereference a member from the same set, use the rec keyword:

nix-repl> rec { a = 0; b = "bar"; c = true; d = (6 / 2); e = b; }.e
"bar"

Paths

In Nix all paths are translated to absolute ones. If you make a reference to a file in the current directory:

nix-repl> ./foo
/home/vakelo/foo

It gets translated to an absolute path. This is a Good Thing™.

Similarly, if you make a reference to a relative path inside an absolute path, it still gets translated to an absolute one:

nix-repl> /./foo
/foo

Note, however, that Nix doesn’t like paths that stand alone:

nix-repl> /
error: syntax error, unexpected '/', at (string):1:1

nix-repl> ./
error: syntax error, unexpected '.', at (string):1:1

Functions

What fun would it be if there’ll be no verbs to use with these nouns? Functions in Nix share similarities with other languages while having its own unique traits.

The most basic form of a function follows:

nix-repl> x: x
«lambda»

This expression creates an anonymous function that returns its argument—the identity function. The colon after the first x indicates that it is a parameter to the function, just like in lambda calculus. Also, the names do not matter due to alpha equivalence:

nix-repl> foo-bar-baz: foo-bar-baz
«lambda»

These functions are not of much use because they are not captured for application. If we want to use it, for example with the argument "foo", we need to surround it with parentheses:

nix-repl> (x: x) "foo"
"foo"

To add more fun, let’s name that function:

nix-repl> identity = x: x

Sweet! Now, let’s apply it:

nix-repl> identity "foo"
"foo"

Let’s create a function that appends " ugh" to its input, then let’s apply it:

nix-repl> ugh = s: s + " ugh"

nix-repl> ugh "me"
"me ugh"

To define a function that takes another argument, let’s use the following form:

nix-repl> ugh = s: t: s + " ugh " + t

nix-repl> ugh "me" "you"
"me ugh you"

The pattern is that to add an additional parameter, use the name: form.

Sets, when used with functions, enable more powerful abstractions. We can pass a set as an argument to a function, which will then use the data inside that set:

nix-repl> poof = { a, b }: x: a + " " + b + x

This function has two parameters: { a, b }—a parameter specification for a set with two elements, and x—a regular parameter. Take note, that the parameter specification is not a real set, but merely a way to match arguments; it uses a comma, as value separator. Inside this function we combine the inputs with the + operator. To use this function, we’d do it like:

nix-repl> poof { a = "ugh"; b = "me"; } " poof"
"ugh me poof"

When a function declares a set as its parameter, you need to specify the keywords when invoking the function that uses them. In this case the keyword names are a and b.

The definition of poof above is semantically similar to:

nix-repl> poof = meh: x: meh.a + " " + meh.b + x

We used a regular, non-set parameter here so that it can refer to the set as a value. Observe this:

nix-repl> meh = { a = "foo"; b = "bar"; }

nix-repl> meh.a
"foo"

It is also possible to specify default values. When a parameter with default value is not used, the default value will be used. They are declared similarly in Common Lisp:

* (defun foof (a &optional (b "O.o"))
    (concatenate 'string a b))

* (foof "o.O ")

"o.O O.o"
* (foof "o.O " "^_^")

"o.O ^_^"

nix-repl> foof = { a, b ? "O.o" }: a + b

nix-repl> foof { a = "goo"; }
"gooO.o"

nix-repl> foof { a = "goo"; b = "oog"; }
"goooog"

To add even more flexibility, Nix supports the use of pseudorest arguments. Let’s modify the function from above:

nix-repl> foof = { a, b, ...}: a + b

Let’s use it:

nix-repl> foof { a = "meh"; b = "foo"; }
"mehfoo"

The same. So how can we make use of that flexibility, then? We’ll create a label for the attribute set, so that we can refer to the ‘extra’ values:

nix-repl> foof = attrs@{ a, b, ...}: a + b + attrs.c

We use it just like before, but with the use of the label:

nix-repl> foof { a = "goo"; b = "oog"; c = "hhh"; }
"gooooghhh"

I said ‘pseudo’ because the value for c was still required.

Default values and variable arity can be combined together:

nix-repl> foof = attrs@{ a, b, c ? "C", ... }: a + b + c + attrs.d

nix-repl> foof { a = "A"; b = "B"; d = "D"; }
"ABCD"

nix-repl> foof { a = "A"; b = "B"; c = "X"; d = "D"; }
"ABXD"

Let

The keyword let lets (pun not intended) us define variables in a local scope. For example, to make the identifiers x and y visible only in a local scope:

nix-repl> let x = "foo"; y = "bar"; in x + poof { a = "huh"; b = "really"; } "hmm" + y
"foohuh reallyhmmbar"

Take note of the last ; before the in keyword that goes with let—it marks the start of the let body. The let construct behaves in similar ways to the let keyword found in languages like Lisp and Haskell.

With

The keyword with lets you ‘drop’ set values in a scope:

nix-repl> with { x = "foo"; y = "bar"; }; poof { a = y; b = x; } " xyz"
"bar foo xyz"

What happened here is that the values inside that set were ‘unveiled’ to make them available in the with body.

Conditionals

Conditional expressions are done with the if keyword. It has a similar form with mainstream languages:

nix-repl> if true then "true" else "false"
"true"

It can also be nested:

nix-repl> if false then "true" else if false then "true" else if false then "true" else "false"
"false"

File imports

The idea of importing files into a Nix expression is subtly different from other languages. Imports in Nix are closely tied with sets. Presuming we have the file meh.nix that contains the following:

let
  meh = x: x + "meh";
in {
  meh = meh;
}

The let expression binds the name meh to a function that takes one argument. In the body of let, it returns a set which contains one member with the name meh—the one on the left side of the =. The value of this member is the function that was just defined. The important concept to remember here is that this let expression returns an attribute set.

Let’s go back to the REPL to use this file:

nix-repl> import ./meh.nix
{ meh = «lambda»; }

We see again the familiar lambda term. The meh name here, as it shows, is a function. Now, how can we dereference this value? With the use of the . operator!

nix-repl> (import ./meh.nix).meh "foo"
"foomeh"

We had to use parentheses because there is no such file as meh.nix.meh in the current directory. If we’re going to step through it, it would like the following:

nix-repl> { meh = «lambda»; }.meh "foo"

becoming:

nix-repl> { meh = (x: x + "meh"); }.meh "foo"
"foomeh"

This pretty sums up the introductory concepts about the Nix language. The rest of the hairy details are available in the manual.

Nixpkgs

Nixpkgs is a collection of packages curated and maintained by users worldwide. Since the source code is in GitHub, it is able to take advantage of the powerful collaboration models that that platform offers. The collection contains a wide array of packages ranging from productivity applications to theorem provers.

Most of the popular operating systems handle packages well, until, they don’t. As long as you are moving in a straight line, alone, you’ll be fine. Things change, when you introduce other people in the walk. For the whole cast to move in unison, everyone must be strictly connected to one another. If a member decides to break off, and walk on their own, the entire cast becomes crippled. However, if that member clones themself so that the departing copy becomes independent, the original walking cast becomes undisturbed.

Let’s take the case of a distribution aimed as a multi-user production development environment. When you install Firefox version 100, the main binary goes to either /usr/bin/firefox or /usr/local/bin/firefox. All the users then, in this system, will be able to access the application from that path; John, Mary, and Peter are happy. However, when John upgrades it to version 200, the same application that is being used by Mary and Peter get upgraded, too!. That’s not a good thing if they prefer the old version that works with them! Nixpkgs allows you have multiple versions of a software, without collisions from the other versions. John, Mary, and Peter can all have their versions of Firefox without conflicting with the other versions. How does Nixpkgs do it? It does it by naming components by their computed checksums, and by not using a common global location.

Each user has their own versions of ~/.nix-profile and all of the contents of those directories do not contain regular files. Instead, they are all symbolic files to the actual files located in /nix/store/. This directory is where programs and their dependencies are actually installed. The only way to write to that directory is through the Nix-specific programs. There is no way to modify the contents of that directory through normal means. So, when regular user john installs Vim 8, the program becomes installed as something like /nix/store/w4cr4j13lqzry2b8830819vdz3sdypfa-vim-8.0.0329. mThe characters before the package name is the checksum of all the inputs to build the package. The file /home/john/.nix-profile/bin/vim then points to a symlink to a file in /nix/store/ that will lead to the actual Vim binary in /nix/store/w4cr4j13lqzry2b8830819vdz3sdypfa-vim-8.0.0329/bin/vim.

Installation

Skip this step if you are using NixOS because Nixpkgs already comes with it. To install Nixpkgs on GNU/Linux or macOS, run:

$ curl https://nixos.org/nix/install | bash

You’ll be prompted to enter credentials for root access via sudo because it will install the resources to /nix/. After the installation, you may also be requested to append a line of command to your shell initialization file. When you spawn a new shell instance, the Nix-specific commands will be available for use.

Usage

There are two ways to install packages with Nixpkgs: the git checkout, which is the bleeding edge, up-to-the-minute updated version, or by using channels. The git repository is ideal for people who want to use the latest and greatest available version of a package, or for those who want to test things out. Channels on the other hand, are essentially snapshots of the git repository at an earlier version.

Git

Updates to the git repository happen frequently—as you are reading this article, new commits are made to the main tree. To use the git checkout, clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs ~/nixpkgs

This command creates a nixpkgs/ directory under your home. If your username is vakelo, the clone of the repository is available at /home/vakelo/nixpkgs/ or /Users/vakelo/nixpkgs/, if you’re using a GNU/Linux or macOS, respectively.

To install a package, say emem—a Markdown to HTML converter—using the git checkout, run:

$ nix-env -f ~/nixpkgs/default.nix -iA emem

This will download emem along with all its dependencies, and then it will make the program available to you. To make sure that emem has successfully installed, run:

$ emem --version

If your shell doesn’t barf and complain that you’re looking for something that does not exist, and instead you see a version number, it means that you have successfully installed emem.

To get the most recent changes from the git repo, run:

$ cd ~/nixpkgs && git pull origin master

Channels

Installing packages via channels is nicer, because the commands to install packages with it are more convenient. The trade-off is that the packages will be out-of-date by a few days. If you’re fine with it, then use channels instead of the git checkout.

Channels are labeled stable, unstable, or with a specific version number, e.g., 18.09 or 21.05. For this article, let’s use the unstable channel—it’s not as dated as stable, nor as recent as the git checkout. To subscribe to the unstable channel, run:

$ nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixpkgs-unstable nixpkgs

This fetches the channel labeled nixpkgs-unstable from nixos.org, then installs it to your user profile.

To browse the list of channels, go here.

Using the example above, to install emem, run the following commands for NixOS and other systems, respectively:

$ nix-env -iA nixos.emem

$ nix-env -iA nixpkgs.emem

To update your channels, run:

$ nix-channel --update

Over time, trees in /nix/store/ accumulate and there may be paths that are no longer referenced by any package. To clean it up, run:

$ nix-collect-garbage

Other commands

To uninstall a package, run:

$ nix-env -e emem

To list all your installed packages, run:

$ nix-env -q --installed

To list all available packages, run:

$ nix-env -q --available

Configuration

The file ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix is a Nix expression, which is read by the Nix commands. In it, we’re able to specify package overrides—configuration that supplants default settings, and other knobs including, but not limited to, browser plugins, GUI configurations, SSL, etc.

Let’s take a look at a trimmed-down version of my config.nix:

{ pkgs }:

{
  packageOverrides = pkgs: {
    emacs = pkgs.emacs.override {
      withGTK2 = false;
      withGTK3 = false;
      withXwidgets = false;
    };
  };

  firefox = {
    jre = true;
    enableGoogleTalkPlugin = true;
  };

  allowUnfree = true;
}

This is a function, that takes an attribute as parameter, then yields another attribute set as return value. My config.nix says that I don’t want GTK for Emacs. For Firefox, I specified that I want to use the JRE and the Google Talk plugin. Lastly, I am specifying that I want to be able to install software which doesn’t have open source licenses, or software that doesn’t follow the free software model.

Contributing

The collaboration model of Nixpkgs rests with git and GitHub. To contribute a package or update an existing one, fork the Nixpkgs repository into your own GitHub account. Mmake changes into a new branch, then create a pull request.

Updating existing package

After you have forked the repository, clone your version of the repository.

$ git clone git@github.com:vakelo/nixpkgs.git ~/nixpkgs

This will create a copy of your fork in the root of your home directory. Head over to that directory, then let’s examine its contents:

$ cd ~/nixpkgs
$ tree -aFL 1
.
├── COPYING
├── default.nix
├── doc/
├── .editorconfig
├── .git/
├── .github/
├── .gitignore
├── lib/
├── maintainers/
├── .mention-bot
├── nixos/
├── pkgs/
├── README.md
├── .travis.yml
├── .version
└── .version-suffix

7 directories, 9 files

Next, let’s find where the package lives, for example GNU Hello.

$ grep hello pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix
  hello = callPackage ../applications/misc/hello { };

It says here that the package GNU Hello is available under ../applications/misc/hello. Relative to the file all-packages.nix, the path is at pkgs/applications/misc/hello or ~/nixpkgs/pkgs/applications/misc/hello. Let’s go there:

$ cd pkgs/applications/misc/hello
$ ls
default.nix

Open the file default.nix:

{ stdenv, fetchurl }:

stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
  name = "hello-2.10";

  src = fetchurl {
    url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
    sha256 = "0ssi1wpaf7plaswqqjwigppsg5fyh99vdlb9kzl7c9lng89ndq1i";
  };

  doCheck = true;

  meta = {
    description = "A program that produces a familiar, friendly greeting";
    longDescription = ''
      GNU Hello is a program that prints "Hello, world!" when you run it.
      It is fully customizable.
    '';
    homepage = http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/manual/;
    license = stdenv.lib.licenses.gpl3Plus;
    maintainers = [ stdenv.lib.maintainers.eelco ];
    platforms = stdenv.lib.platforms.all;
  };
}

This tells us that default.nix, is a function with a parameter as an attribute with two elements. The function returns the result of calling stdenv.mkDerivation with the input of an attribute value. The value for the name attribute is a string with the format packagename-X.Y.Z, where packagename is the name of the package and X.Y.Z is the version number. The value for the src attribute is the value returned by calling the fetchurl function, with another attribute set argument. The value for the url attribute should either be a mirror specification, as described in pkgs/build-support/fetchurl/mirrors.nix, or a standard URL. In this instance, we used the GNU mirror and we interpolated the name variable inside that string. The value of the sha256 attribute is the one we get by running nix-prefetch-url against the URL. To get the checksum for hello-2.10, run:

$ nix-prefetch-url http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/hello/hello-2.10.tar.gz
downloading ‘http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/hello/hello-2.10.tar.gz’... [622/709 KiB, 64.6 KiB/s]
path is ‘/nix/store/3x7dwzq014bblazs7kq20p9hyzz0qh8g-hello-2.10.tar.gz’
0ssi1wpaf7plaswqqjwigppsg5fyh99vdlb9kzl7c9lng89ndq1i

It matched the SHA256 specification above.

The doCheck attribute instructs Nix to run the tests for this package.

The value for the meta attribute is another attribute set specification for other details regarding the package. The values specified here will help Nix programs classify the package, among other things. The description attribute is a short string describing the purpose of the package. The longDescription attribute is a longer, possibly multi-line string to describe the package in more details. The homepage attribute is a URL to the WWW home of the package. You don’t need to quote it with single or double quotes explicitly—it does that internally. You still have to quote a URL if you use variable interpolation. The maintainers attribute is a list of the people handling that package. The platforms attribute is important: it categorizes a package properly—we don’t want to build a package on macOS that only runs on GNU/Linux.

If a newer version of GNU Hello comes out, say version 2.11, modify the appropriate attributes. But first, let’s create a separate branch for it:

$ git checkout -b hello-2.11

In default.nix, change the name to hello-2.11 and update the sha256 attribute, too. Additionally, if you’re on NixOS, add the following values to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix:

nix.useSandbox = true;

If you’re using another GNU/Linux system, or macOS, add the following to /etc/nix/nix.conf:

build-use-sandbox = relaxed

Next, build the package:

$ cd ~/nixpkgs
$ nix-build -A hello

If the build went successful, a symlink named result, in the current directory will be created. This symlink points to a path in /nix/store/. Let’s run the program:

$ ./result/bin/hello
Hello, world!

Good. Commit the changes.

$ git add -u
$ git commit -m 'hello: 2.10 -> 2.11'
$ git push origin hello-2.11

Finally, go to the GitHub repo page, then create a pull request (PR) between nixos/nixpkgs:master and vakelo/nixpkgs:hello-2.11.

Submitting a new package

The steps for submitting a new package is pretty much the same as with updating an existing one, except for a few things.

At the start, create a new branch for your package:

$ cd ~/nixpkgs
$ git checkout -b tthsum-1.3.2

Then, decide what category should it belong to:

$ cd pkgs/applications/misc
$ mkdir tthsum

Create the default.nix file:

{ stdenv, fetchurl }:

stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
  name = "tthsum-${version}";
  version = "1.3.2";

  src = fetchurl {
    url = "http://tthsum.devs.nu/pkg/tthsum-${version}.tar.bz2";
    sha256 = "0z6jq8lbg9rasv98kxfs56936dgpgzsg3yc9k52878qfw1l2bp59";
  };

  installPhase = ''
    mkdir -p $out/bin $out/share/man/man1
    cp share/tthsum.1.gz $out/share/man/man1
    cp obj-unix/tthsum $out/bin
  '';

  meta = with stdenv.lib; {
    description = "An md5sum-alike program that works with Tiger/THEX hashes";
    longDescription = ''
      tthsum generates or checks TTH checksums (root of the THEX hash
      tree). The Merkle Hash Tree, invented by Ralph Merkle, is a hash
      construct that exhibits desirable properties for verifying the
      integrity of files and file subranges in an incremental or
      out-of-order fashion. tthsum uses the Tiger hash algorithm for
      both the internal and the leaf nodes.
    '';
    homepage = http://tthsum.devs.nu/;
    license = licenses.gpl3Plus;
    maintainers = [ maintainers.ebzzry ];
    platforms = platforms.unix;
  };
}

What’s new here is the installPhase attribute. The default build procedures of the tthsum package is different from the way Nix handles installations, so we have to be explicit about it. The $out identifier refers to the final directory where the program will reside in /nix/store/. In the user environment, the program will be available as ~/.nix-profile/bin/tthsum, and for the system environment, it will be available as /run/current-system/sw/bin/tthsum.

At this point, Nix is still not aware of tthsum. We have to declare it at the top level. To do so, edit the file pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix, and add the following in the correct category:

tthsum = callPackage ../applications/misc/tthsum { };

Next, build the package as described above:

$ cd ~/nixpkgs
$ nix-build -A tthsum

If everything goes well, commit the changes:

$ git add pkgs/applications/misc/tthsum
$ git add pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix
$ git commit -m "tthsum: init at 1.3.2"
$ git push origin tthsum-1.3.m2

Finally, go to the GitHub repo page, then create a pull request (PR) between nixos/nixpkgs:master and vakelo/nixpkgs:tthsum-1.3.2.

Notes

If at any point during the installation of a package, the process is interrupted, the package being installed will not be in a half-baked state. The very last step of installing a package is atomic. The secret to it is that it the operation that makes it available to a user creates a symlink from /nix/store, where the actual program data is, to your profile, which is located at ~/.nix-profile/. Symbolic link creation in GNU/Linux and macOS are either successful or not.

On NixOS, the channel used by the root user is important because it is the one used when rebuilding the system with nixos-rebuild switch after changes to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix are made. To make sure that you using the right channel, list it with:

$ sudo nix-channel --list

To change the root channel similar to the one used above:

$ sudo nix-channel --add https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-unstable nixos

Environments

An environment is a way of Nix of providing component isolation between system and users. In NixOS, there are three environments: system environment, user environment, and development environment.

System environment

The system environment is modified only by the root user who declares its value in /etc/nixos/configuration.nix. It is a list which contains the packages that will be made available to all users of the system. An excerpt of /etc/nixos/configuration.nix that uses the system environment is:

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:

{
  ...
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ zsh vim ];
  ...
}

This declares that the packages named zsh and vim will be available for all users of the system. The binaries will be available as /run/current-system/sw/bin/zsh and /run/current-system/sw/bin/vim, for Zsh and Vim, respectively.

By the way, the system environment only exists on NixOS.

User environment

The user environment is the one that is used whenever the command nix-env is used. For example, when installing Zsh using nix-env:

$ nix-env -iA nixos.zsh

Zsh only becomes explicitly available for the user invoking it. If john is the username who ran that command, then the Zsh binary will be available as /home/john/.nix-profile/bin/zsh. If the user mary hasn’t installed Zsh to her profile, then it is unavailable to her. If Mary has the same channel as John, and she runs the same nix-env command, then Nix will no longer need to fetch the Zsh program data, from scratch. Instead, Nix makes the Zsh program data, created by the nix-env process that John used earlier, to make Zsh available to Mary. However, if Mary uses the git checkout, or a different version of channels than the one used by John, and the versions of Zsh differ from the version of John, then the invocation of nix-env by Mary will fetch a newer instance of Zsh.

Development environment

The third environment, development environments, are created with the use of nix-shell. nix-shell allows the user to create sandboxed environments. The environment created is isolated from the system and regular user environments. The environment created will still use /nix/store, but neither /run/current-system/sw/ nor ~/.nix-profile/ will be modified. What nix-shell provides is an environment that is separated from the rest of the system, allowing the user to create ad-hoc deployments, without worries of altering system state. With this, a user gains the ability, for example, to use an environment to test out different deployments of an application, or to compare features prior to delivery.

To create environments that are disjunct from the rest of the system, we need to have a way to separate the dependencies of an application and its data itself, from normal system intervention. The nix-shell allows us to create thin layers of abstraction while still taking advantage of the determinism and resource management of Nix itself.

To illustrate, let’s check that we don’t have GNU Hello installed, yet:

$ which hello
hello not found

If that is the case, good. Otherwise, remove the GNU Hello package first.

Now, to demonstrate nix-shell, let’s run GNU Hello in the nix-shell, then it will return back to the user shell:

$ nix-shell --packages hello --pure --run hello
Hello, world!
$ which hello
hello not found

What this does is that fetches the binary package for GNU Hello, creates an clean shell environment, then proceeds to run the hello binary, which will display to the screen the familiar greeting. If the −−run option was omitted, we will be dropped in a shell:

$ nix-shell --packages hello --pure
[nix-shell:~]$ hello
Hello, world!

This shell instance is special because it only contains sufficient information just to make GNU Hello, available. We can even inspect the value of $PATH, here:

[nix-shell:~]$ echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n'
/nix/store/kc912zn1ry1xilcm901ip7p8s1iqv0f1-hello-2.10/bin
/nix/store/f9q8k36x9jpi8jmdpwifcywzywpxvhrs-patchelf-0.9/bin
/nix/store/xx2bclrflkcvrddvp6bd3wsasqs7vsp1-paxctl-0.9/bin
/nix/store/4d6f8hg5gv20nsbq7b52qzn6bcs4fvlh-coreutils-8.26/bin
/nix/store/f3vl26f3n18khgq1kybnzvwjbm0r9grg-findutils-4.6.0/bin
/nix/store/mvnjpifk06yjffrsd50rpr3jjfrjsqiv-diffutils-3.5/bin
/nix/store/0xwrn1p8fp8h3cynszpgbmhmydbzhns5-gnused-4.4/bin
/nix/store/avmxym1w34sc17nrilsmgrk469l3ml0z-gnugrep-3.0/bin
/nix/store/2vh4wllg66rw61ffdfwp1xm4r2yns44j-gawk-4.1.3/bin
/nix/store/rhjsykhxrzj3ca8da6b4g6v1yx53xpi3-gnutar-1.29/bin
/nix/store/w1vlvxlavmz39by5xpnhva36q2lbi9hf-gzip-1.8/bin
/nix/store/mgvqw07ssjhf1hb96md97rjkfsrmfmp6-bzip2-1.0.6.0.1-bin/bin
/nix/store/69y0laqzizjycwaqivbsp273n0ag3ayi-gnumake-4.2.1/bin
/nix/store/86blj9iqyxwmdgkn3dyrpib1gkbmz91v-bash-4.4-p5/bin
/nix/store/qjklkl51d6qp98n8nncvbv62p01pp6qf-patch-2.7.5/bin
/nix/store/8pcap19p6qwf06ra4iaja3n6k6p2jzwg-xz-5.2.2-bin/bin

Your output is going to be different from mine because of the hashes in the store paths. Aside from the store path of GNU Hello, the rest are the minimal components of a nix-shell instance. This cluster is called the stdenv.

nix-shell looks for the files shell.nix or default.nix, in that order, in the current directory during startup, to load definitions from. Let’s create one, saving it as default.nix:

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:

with pkgs;
stdenv.mkDerivation {
  name = "shell";
  buildInputs = [ hello emem ];
}

A .nix file is a Nix expression. In this example, it’s a function that takes one argument, with a default value. The odd-looking <nixpkgs> refers to the value of the nixpkgs attribute declared in the NIX_PATH environment variable. On NixOS, it looks like this:

$ echo $NIX_PATH
nixpkgs=/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixpkgs:nixos-config=/etc/nixos/configuration.nix:/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels

In the directory being pointed by the nixpkgs attribute, there’s a .git-revision file. Let’s view its contents:

$ cat /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixpkgs/.git-revision
1e8c01784a6a121fc94d111f4af7cc88dd932186

This tells us the version of Nixpkgs using channels on this profile.

Going back, the with pkgs declaration puts all the identifiers in the local scope, making them visible. stdenv, which was mentioned earlier, is an attribute set which, among many things, contain the mkDerivation identifier. mkDerivation, in turn, is a function that accepts one attribute set argument. Let me remind you, that the curly braces after mkDerivation specifies a single unit of argument, which is the attribute set; it has no semantic resemblance to the curly braces found in other languages to delimit the start and end of a function scope. There are many knobs to it, but for the purposes of simplicity, we’ll only look at name and buildInputs—the bare attribute parameters.

For our trivial example, the value of name can be anything. The value of buildInputs, however, is important. Here, they’re declared to be hello and emem. These are references to values inside the nixpkgs marker that we saw earlier. Had we not used with pkgs, the expression would be:

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:

pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation {
  name = "shell";
  buildInputs = [ pkgs.hello pkgs.emem ];

To feed this expression to nix-shell, making use of both hello and emem, run:

$ nix-shell --pure --run "hello | emem -w"
<p>Hello, world!</p>

nix-shell gives us strong abstraction mechanisms that are deemed very difficult to do in other approaches. It banks on the deterministic properties of Nix, creating a very strong leverage.

Overlays

There will be times when you need to make modifications to the package system, but you’re not willing to go full nuts and mess around with the Git repository. There will also be times when you want to have your own private package, which you’re not willing to push out into the public. Overlays can greatly help you with that.

As the name implies, the overlay mechanism is a way to create an abstracting layer on top of the existing expressions. One usage is like putting on a suit for an interview—you’re still you underneath, but the way you appear has drastically changed. Another usage is like replacing your internal organs with cybernetic ones—you’re still a bit you, but parts of you has drastically changed. Another usage, which is one of my favorites, is creating a new being from virtually nothing.

Overlay files are your familiar Nix expressions, with a specific format. They live in ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/. If don’t have that directory, you may create it with:

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays

I structure my overlay files so that each file corresponds to one package, whose behavior I want to change.

Overrides

For example, if you want to make sure that the documentation for Racket is installed, create the file ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/racket.nix with the following contents:

self: super: {
  racket = super.racket.override {
    disableDocs = false;
  };
}

It’s a Nix function with two arguments—self and super. super refers to the expressions that belong to the system, while self refers to the set of expressions that are defining it. It’s mandatory that there are two arguments and that they are self and super.

Next, specify that for the racket attribute, it will call the override function from the source layer, passing it an attribute set that will contain the overrides.

When you install or reinstall Racket or Chromium, those settings will be read and taken into effect:

$ nix-env -iA $(nix-channel --list | awk '{print $1}').racket

New packages

Using the overlay system to create new packages is ideal if you don’t want to make the package part of Nixpkgs, you want to make it private, or you want to add a new infrastructure without handling the extra complexity.

Let’s say that there exists a simple shell program called moo which lives in https://github.com/ebzzry/moo, and you want to package it. To do that, you’ll be writing two things:

1. the top-level overlay file in ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/; and
2. the Nix expression that will actually build moo.

For #1, create the file ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/moo.nix with the following contents:

self: super: {
  moo = super.callPackage ./pkgs/moo { };
}

Then, for #2, create the directory tree for the expression. Take note that it doesn’t have to have the name pkgs:

$ cd ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays
$ mkdir -p pkgs/moo

Then create the file ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/pkgs/moo/default.nix with the following contents:

{ stdenv, fetchFromGitHub, bash }:

stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
  name = "moo-${version}";
  version = "0.0.1";

  src = fetchFromGitHub {
    owner = "ebzzry";
    repo = "moo";
    rev = "abd22b4860f83fe7469e8e40ee50f0db1c7a5f2c";
    sha256 = "0jh0kdc7z8d632gwpvzclx1bbacpsr6brkphbil93vb654mk16ws";
  };

  buildPhase = ''
    substituteInPlace moo --replace "/usr/bin/env bash" "${bash}/bin/bash"
  '';

  installPhase = ''
    mkdir -p $out/bin
    cp moo $out/bin
    chmod +x $out/bin/moo
  '';

  meta = with stdenv.lib; {
    description = "Random helper";
    homepage = https://github.com/ebzzry/moo;
    license = licenses.cc0;
    maintainers = [ maintainers.ebzzry ];
    platforms = platforms.all;
  };
}

With those two files in place, you can now install moo:

$ nix-env -iA $(nix-channel --list | awk '{print $1}').moo

Closing remarks

Nix provides powerful tools to make managing systems and development configurations, significantly easier. It has flexible facilities for creating efficient workflows and distribution models. If I had to list down the most important features of the Nix ecosystem that I like, they are:

• deterministic
• reproducible
• stateless
• declarative
• consistent
• portable
• reliable
• purely functional

Another important member of the Nix family is NixOps; it enables one to deploy NixOS on bare-metal machines, virtual machines, or cloud using the declarative approach that we are familiar with. It is able to deploy to VirtualBox, Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, Microsoft Azure, Hetzner, Digital Ocean, and Libvirtd. Head over to the manual for more details.

In-depth details about instantiations, derivations, and realisations were elided on purpose, in this article. They may become a topic on their own, or I may update this article to add those topics. I may also write a new section about NixOps.

An Emacs major mode for Nix files is available from the main repository. It is also available via MELPA. You may install it with:

M-x package-install RET nix-mode RET

There are other package management systems that are trying to solve this problem domain, too. The ones that I’m aware of are AppImage, Zero Install, Snapcraft, and Flatpak.

The Guix System Distribution (GuixSD) is a GNU/Linux distribution that is based on Nix. It uses Guile as its API language. The key differences between GuixSD and NixOS is that the former uses GNU Shepherd instead of systemd; it doesn’t allow non-free packages; and it uses Linux-libre, a stripped down version of the mainstream kernel with all the proprietary blobs removed. More information about their differences can be found here.

Aside from GuixSD, there are also other projects that Nix has inspired. There is Habitat, an application automation framework; and ied, an alternative package manager for Node.js.

The articles of Luca Bruno, James Fisher, and Oliver Charles, together with the NixOS, Nixpkgs, and Nix manuals, significantly helped me in understanding Nix. Special thanks goes to François-René Rideau for introducing me to Nix several years ago.

The NixOS Foundation is a registered non-profit organization; your donations will significantly help in the development of Nix. Join the community and help make it grow!

Bonus

Here’s the Y combinator in Nix, applied to the factorial function:

nix-repl> y = x: ((f: (x (v: ((f f) v)))) (f: (x (v: ((f f) v)))))

nix-repl> b = p: (n: if n == 0 then 1 else (n * (p (n - 1))))

nix-repl> f = y b

nix-repl> f 20
2432902008176640000

or, in one expression, using let:

nix-repl> let y = x: ((f: (x (v: ((f f) v)))) (f: (x (v: ((f f) v)))));
              b = p: (n: if n == 0 then 1 else (n * (p (n - 1))));
              f = y b;
          in f 20
2432902008176640000

You may also pipe stdout to nix-repl:

$ echo 'let y = x: ((f: (x (v: ((f f) v)))) (f: (x (v: ((f f) v))))); b = p: (n: if n == 0 then 1 else (n * (p (n - 1)))); f = y b; in f 20' | nix-repl
Welcome to Nix version 1.11.8. Type :? for help.

nix-repl> let y = x: ((f: (x (v: ((f f) v)))) (f: (x (v: ((f f) v))))); b = p: (n: if n == 0 then 1 else (n * (p (n - 1)))); f = y b; in f 20
2432902008176640000

nix-repl>

Thanks to Dave Loyall, Yekta Leblebici, and Dan Svoboda for the corrections.