This document is a WORK IN PROGRESS.
This is just a quick personal cheat sheet: treat its contents with caution!

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Nix

Nix is a purely functional package manager that aims to make package management reliable and reproducible.

Tip

Although this cheat sheet is categorized as "NixOS-based", the Nix package manager can be installed on any distribution.

Reference(s)

• https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/
• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/index.html
• https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/
• https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Flakes
• https://nixos.org/download.html#download-nix
• https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix_Installation_Guide
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Nix

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Table of contents

• Install
• Config
• Use

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Install

Reference(s)

• https://nixos.org/download.html#download-nix
• https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix_Installation_Guide

Prerequisite(s)

• Git

• "Multi-user" installation (recommended):

  $ sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon
  

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Config

• Switch to a previous Nix version (e.g. 2.4):

  $ cd /tmp
  $ nix build 'nix/2.4'
  $ nix-env -i ./result
  

  Then in a new terminal (or after $ hash -r in a Bash shell, or $ rehash in a Zsh shell):

  $ nix --version
      > nix (Nix) 2.4
  

• TODO: Switch to NixOS Nix version:

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Use

• Get help:

  $ nix --help
  

• Search a Nix package:

  $ nix-env -qaP '.*package_name.*'
  

  or

  $ nix search package_name
  

• Show a package description:

  $ nix-env -qa --description '.*package_name.*'
  

WIP

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