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Nix Setup Guide

Here you will find instructions on how to install and configure nix package manager to work with projects.

Installing / Upgrading

If you don't have nix installed, follow the instructions on the official website, or simply use one of following commands in a terminal:

  • For multi-user installation (i.e., system-wide setup, recommended)
sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon
  • For single-user installation (i.e., local setup)
sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --no-daemon

We use nix flakes which require nix version >= 2.4, therefore if you already have nix installed, make sure to upgrade to a recent version.

Becoming a Truster User

If you are on NixOS or have installed nix in multi-user mode, you must be a trusted user, which is necessary to enable access to our binary cache.

On non-NixOS systems, append the following line to the system-wide configuration /etc/nix/nix.conf:

trusted-users = USER root

Where USER is the result of running whoami in a terminal.

You can also use a group name by prefixing it with @. For instance, to add all members of the wheel group:

trusted-users = @wheel root

On NixOS, add the user/group name to the list under nix.settings.trusted-users.

Setting Up for Flakes

We use Nix flakes. To configure for flakes, follow the instruction on the Nixos Wiki or simply do one of the following depending on your system:

  • On non-NixOS systems, edit one of the following two files (create them if they don't exist):
    • /etc/nix/nix.conf for system-wide settings on a multi-user installation
    • ~/.config/nix/nix.conf for user-wide settings on a single-user installation

By appending the following lines:

experimental-features = nix-command flakes

On NixOS systems, set the following NixOS options:

 nix.settings.experimental-features = [ "nix-command" "flakes" ];

Notes for Apple Users

Apple Silicon users can run any Intel binary out-of-the-box thanks to Rosetta emulation, but when working with nix flakes, the aarch64-darwin system will be selected by default.

However, some projects at cannot be built natively on aarch64-darwin.

Therefore you must specify the --system explicitly to target x86_64-darwin.

nix (develop|build|run|check) --system x86_64-darwin # Will use the x86_64-darwin derivation
nix (develop|build|run|check) # Will use the aarch64-darwin derivation, if available

To enable this, you must append the following lines to your /etc/nix/nix.conf or ~/.config/nix/nix.conf:

extra-platforms = x86_64-darwin aarch64-darwin
extra-sandbox-paths = /System/Library/Frameworks /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks /usr/lib /private/tmp /private/var/tmp /usr/bin/env

You may need to reload the nix daemon for changes to take effect:

sudo launchctl stop org.nixos.nix-daemon
sudo launchctl start org.nixos.nix-daemon

Development Shell and VSCode

Now that you have nix installed and configured, you may enter the development shell:

nix develop

If you are on Apple Silicon and a native shell is not available, you will want to run this instead:

nix develop --system x86_64-darwin

If you are a VSCode user, you may also start your development session by executing the following command:

nix develop --command code

If you are running nix develop for the first time, please enter y at the following prompts to create the local nix settings file ~/.local/share/nix/trusted-settings.json:

> do you want to allow configuration setting 'accept-flake-config' to be set to 'true' (y/N)?
> do you want to permanently mark this value as trusted (y/N)?

It is particularly important to accept the extra-substituters and extra-trusted-public-keys settings as these will grant access to our binary cache.

When nix develop is run for the first time, a significant amount of dependencies will be downloaded, built and installed. This process may take a couple of hours but is expected to happen only once. However, if you ever witness that GHC is also being built from scratch, then it is likely that your binary cache has not been configured properly or is not being considered. Accepting the configuration settings as outlined above should be sufficient to avoid this. Nevertheless, if your caches are still broken, you'll want to review this document carefully to ensure that your nix installation is properly configured.

You will know that your caches are broken if you see this message:

warning: ignoring untrusted substituter 'https://cache.iog.io', you are not a trusted user.

If is possible that your settings are correct but the nix daemon is not properly considering them. In this case, stop the nix develop process and restart the nix-daemon as follows:

sudo systemctl stop nix-daemon.service

Once done, you can launch the nix develop process again.