Awesome Nix

A curated list of the best resources in the Nix community.

Nix is a powerful package manager for Linux and other Unix systems that makes package management reliable and reproducible.

Please read the contribution guidelines before contributing.

Contents

• Resources
  • Learning
  • Discovery
  • Newsletters
• Installation Media
• Channel History
• Deployment Tools
• Command-Line Tools
• Development
• Programming Languages
  • Arduino
  • Crystal
  • Elm
  • Haskell
  • Node.js
  • PHP
  • PureScript
  • Python
  • Ruby
  • Rust
  • Scala
• NixOS Modules
• Overlays
• Community

Resources

Learning

• How to Learn Nix - It's like a Let's Play, but for obscure software documentation.
• Nix Notes - A collection of short notes about Nix, each contributing to the same virtual machine image.
• Nix Pills - The best way to learn, with examples.
• Nix Shorts - A collection of short notes about Nix.
• nix.dev - An opinionated guide for developers about getting things done using the Nix ecosystem.
• Tour of Nix - An online interactive tutorial on Nix language constructs.

Discovery

• Hound - Handily search across all or selected Nix-related repositories.
• Pkgs on Nix - A database with Nix packages at all versions, from all channels.

Newsletters

• NixOS Weekly - The newsletter to stay informed about community updates.

Installation Media

• nixos-generators - Take a NixOS config and build multiple different images types including VirtualBox VMs, Azure images, and installation ISOs.
• nixos-up - Super easy NixOS installer that can be used from the installation ISO.

Channel History

• Channel History - Get historical git commits for Nix channels.
• Nix Infra Status - Get the age and current git commit of each Nix channel.
• nixpkgs PR tracker - A tracker for whether a PR has made it into a channel yet.

Deployment Tools

• Colmena - A simple, stateless NixOS deployment tool modeled after NixOps and morph.
• krops - A lightweight toolkit to deploy NixOS systems, remotely or locally.
• KubeNix - A Kubernetes resource builder using Nix.
• KuberNix - Single-dependency Kubernetes clusters via Nix packages.
• morph - A tool for managing existing NixOS hosts.
• Nixery - A Docker-compatible container registry which builds images ad-hoc via Nix.
• NixOps - The official Nix deployment tool, compatible with AWS, Hetzner, and more.
• nixos-shell - Simple headless VM configuration using Nix (similar to Vagrant).
• pushnix - Simple cli utility that pushes NixOS configuration and triggers a rebuild using ssh.
• terraform-nixos - A set of Terraform modules designed to deploy NixOS.
• terranix - Use Nix and the NixOS module system to write your Terraform code.

Command-Line Tools

• comma - Quickly run any binary; wraps together nix run and nix-index.
• nixfmt - A formatter for Nix code, intended to easily apply a uniform style.
• nixpkgs-fmt - Nix code formatter for nixpkgs.
• nixpkgs-hammering - Beat your package expressions into a shape.
• nix-diff - A tool to explain why two Nix derivations differ.
• nix-index - Quickly locate Nix packages with specific files.
• nix-prefetch - A universal tool for updating source checksums.
• nix-tree - Interactively browse the dependency graph of Nix derivations.

Development

• Arion - Run docker-compose with help from Nix/NixOS.
• cached-nix-shell - A nix-shell replacement that uses caching to open subsequent shells quickly.
• Cachix - Hosted binary cache service; free for open-source projects.
• devshell - mkShell with extra bits and a toml config option to be able to onboard non-nix users.
• flake-utils - Pure Nix flake utility functions to help with writing flakes.
• gitignore.nix - The most feature-complete and easy-to-use .gitignore integration.
• lorri - A much better nix-shell for development that augments direnv.
• niv - Easy dependency management for Nix projects with package pinning.
• nix-direnv - A fast loader and flake-compliant configuration for the direnv environment auto-loader.
• nixpkgs-review - The best tool to verify that a pull-request in Nixpkgs is building properly.
• pre-commit-hooks.nix - Run linters/formatters at commit time and on your CI.

Programming Languages

Arduino

• nixduino - Nix-based tool to help build Arduino sketches.

Crystal

• crystal2nix - Convert shard.lock into Nix expressions.

Elm

• elm2nix - Convert elm.json into Nix expressions.

Haskell

• cabal2nix - Converts a Cabal file into a Nix build expression.
• haskell.nix - Alternative Haskell Infrastructure for Nixpkgs.
• nix-haskell-mode - Automatic Haskell setup in Emacs.
• nixkell - A Haskell project template using Nix and direnv.
• stack2nix - Generate nix expressions for Haskell projects.

Node.js

• Napalm - Support for building npm packages in Nix with a lightweight npm registry.
• node2nix - Generate Nix expression from a package.json (or package-lock.json) (to be stored as files).
• npmlock2nix - Generate Nix expressions from a package-lock.json (in-memory), primarily for web projects.
• yarn2nix - Generate Nix expressions from a yarn.lock file.

PHP

• composer2nix - Generate Nix expressions to build composer packages.
• composition-c4 - Support for building composer packages from a composer.lock (using IFD).
• nix-phps - Flake containing old and unmaintained PHP versions (intended for CI use).

PureScript

• Easy PureScript Nix - A project to easily use PureScript and other tools with Nix.

Python

• mach-nix - Tool to create highly reproducible python environments.
• poetry2nix - Build Python packages directly from Poetry's poetry.lock. No conversion step needed.
• pypi2nix - Generate Nix expressions for Python packages.

Ruby

• Bundix - Generates a Nix expression for your Bundler-managed application.

Rust

• fenix - Rust toolchains and Rust analyzer nightly for nix.
• naersk - Build Rust packages directly from Cargo.lock. No conversion step needed.
• nix-cargo-integration - A library that allows easy and effortless integration for Cargo projects.
• nixpkgs-mozilla - Mozilla's overlay with Rust toolchains and Firefox.
• rust-nix-templater - Generates Nix build and development files for Rust projects.
• rust-overlay - Pure and reproducible nix overlay of binary distributed Rust toolchains.

Scala

• sbt-derivation - mkDerivation for sbt, similar to buildGoModule.
• sbt-nix.g8 - giter8 template for new Scala projects with Nix support.

NixOS Modules

• musnix - Do real-time audio work in NixOS.
• nixcloud-webservices - A Nixpkgs extension with a focus on ease of deployment of web-related technologies.
• Simple Nixos Mailserver - A complete mailserver, managed with NixOS modules.

Overlays

• awesome-nix-hpc - High Performance Computing package sets.
• Home Manager - Manage your user configuration just like NixOS.
• nix-bitcoin - Nix packages and NixOS modules for Bitcoin nodes with higher-layer protocols with an emphasis on security.
• nix-darwin - Manage macOS configuration just like on NixOS.
• nixpkgs-wayland - Bleeding-edge Wayland packages.
• NUR - Nix User Repositories. The mother of all overlays, allowing access to user repositories and installing packages via attributes.

Community

• #nix:nixos.org
• #nixos on Libera.Chat
• Discord - Nix/Nixos (Unofficial)
• Discourse - The best place to get help and discuss Nix-related topics.
• NixCon - The annual community conference for contributors and users of Nix and NixOS.
• Wiki (Unofficial)