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Nix Flakes edition

NOTE: This is an experimental version of Nix. Things might break.

Nix Flakes is an experimental branch of the Nix project that adds dependency management and a central entry-point to Nix projects.

Installation

NixOS

Add the following options to the NixOS configuration:

{ pkgs, ... }:
{
  # install the flakes edition
  nix.package = pkgs.nixFlakes;
  # enable the nix 2.0 CLI and flakes support feature-flags
  nix.extraOptions = ''
    experimental-features = nix-command flakes 
  '';
}

Then run nixos-rebuild switch and that’s it.

Other systems

Run nix-env -iA nixFlakes to replace Nix with the flakes edition.

Edit either ~/.config/nix/nix.conf or /etc/nix/nix.conf and add:

experimental-features = nix-command flakes 

This is needed to expose the Nix 2.0 CLI and flakes support that are hidden behind feature-flags.

Finally, if the Nix installation is in multi-user mode, don’t forget to restart the nix-daemon.

Basic project usage

In your repo, run nix flake init to generate the flake.nix file. Then run git add flake.nix to add it to the git staging area, otherwise nix will not recognize that the file exists.

TODO: add more usage examples here

Super fast nix-shell

One of the nix feature of the Flake edition is that Nix evaluations are cached.

Let’s say that your project has a shell.nix file that looks like this:

$ shell.nix as nix

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:
with pkgs;
mkShell {
  buildInputs = [
    nixpkgs-fmt
  ];

  shellHook = ''
    # ...
  '';
}

Running nix-shell can be a bit slow and take 1-3 seconds.

Now create a flake.nix file in the same repository:

$ flake.nix as nix

{
  description = "my project description";
  edition = 201909;
  
  inputs.utils.uri = "github:numtide/flake-utils";

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, utils }:
    utils.lib.eachDefaultSystem (system:
      let pkgs = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.${system}; in
      {
        devShell = import ./shell.nix { inherit pkgs; };
      }
    );
}

Run git add flake.nix so that Nix recognizes it.

And finally, run nix dev-shell. This is what replaces the old nix-shell invocation.

Exit and run again, this command should now be super fast.

Direnv integration

If you are using direnv, here is how to replace the old use nix stdlib function with the faster flake version:

$ use_flake.sh as sh

use_flake() {
  watch_file flake.nix
  watch_file flake.lock
  eval "$(nix print-dev-env --profile "$(direnv_layout_dir)/flake-profile")"
}

Copy this in ~/.config/direnv/lib/use_flake.sh or in ~/.config/direnv/direnvrc

With this in place, you can now replace the use nix invocation in the .envrc file with use flake.

The nice thing about this approach is that evaluation is cached, and that the project’s shell is now protected from the nix garbage-collector.

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