Nix Ecosystem Overview

• Software is graph of dependencies
  • Typically this graph is implicit
  • Nix makes it explicit

Problems with traditional package managers

• Things don’t always work the same on my machine as on your machine
• Dependency conflicts
• Accumulation of cruft
• Packages can only be installed system or user-wide
• Copy and pasting installation instructions

Advantages of Nix

• Reproducible Environments they work the same every time, even on different machines
• Environments as Code No more copying and pasting into your terminal
• Single Tool, Many Languages Nix has packages for developing in many different languages
• Configuration Use a single language to manage machine and user configuration
• Rollbacks Break something? Easily rollback machine configuration. Experiment without fear!

nix-darwin

• nix-darwin is an important project for users of Nix on macOS, as it provides a way to use the Nix package manager on this platform and take advantage of its powerful and functional approach to package management
• nix-darwin flake the installer doesn’t work with flakes out of the box yet nix-darwin will need to be to be bootstrapped using the installer or manually. Afterwards the flake based configuration can be built.

home-manager

• Home Manager is a useful tool for managing and customizing the user environment in Nix-based systems, and can help users to easily maintain a consistent and personalized environment across multiple machines

nix-flake

• Nix flakes provide a way to modularize and share configuration information for software projects, making it easier to manage complex dependencies and reproduce consistent environments

nix-channels

nix-store

• Graph database /nix/store on your disk

nix-derivation

nix-env

• imperatively install packages
• only use if you want to install packages imperatively

cachix

• cachix is a binary cache service for the Nix package manager

Resources

• Nixology series
• Nixpkgs - Python packaging, and development workflow.
• kclejeune system