We're big fans of Nixpkgs (obviously) and encourage others to contribute packaging and review. Nixpkgs is surprisingly easy to contribute to, but has its particular details. This is a guide to contributing your first PR to Nixpkgs.

Contributing to Nixpkgs: a beginner's guide

A guide to contributing your first PR to Nixpkgs.

Contributing to Nixpkgs

Announcing the flox Open Beta

Harness the power of Nix. Today we’re thrilled to release the flox CLI beta to the public as an open source project and announce a Series A funding round led by NEA.

Today we’re thrilled to release the flox CLI beta to the public as an open source project and announce a Series A funding round led by NEA.

Nix in the Wild: Sift Technologies

Sift Technologies specializes in human curation, offering trusted recommendations and facilitating recommendations from people to people. One of the tools they leverage in their work is Nix.

Nix finds extensive usage within Sift Technologies, enabling them to efficiently manage servers and development environments.

Building the Ladder

At NixCon 2022, flox Lead Engineer Tom Bereknyei (@tomberek) presented the mission behind flox.  It was an important moment for us to share with the Nix community what we see as the problems we can solve,  and how we intend to go about solving them.

At NixCon 2022, flox Lead Engineer Tom Bereknyei (@tomberek) presented the mission behind flox.

Building the Ladder: flox at NixCon

Hash Collision

GitHub changed the format of their archives and this  unexpectedly caused some systems and services that depend on the hash of the archives of a source tree to break.  Nix uses NAR hashes, a custom format for source archives; NAR hashes are deterministic based on the content of a source tree.

Github changed the format of their archives and this caused some systems and services that depend on the hash of the archives of a source tree to break. 

NixCon 2022

Last week, the Nix community got together in person for the first time in 3 years, in Paris, for three days of presentations, discussion, and good times.

Thank you NixCon!

Migrating from asdf to flox

Leveling up your version manager. asdf is a popular version manager, helping developers manage the  languages and versions required for a specific project. But there are a few drawbacks to asdf. We can deliver on the asdf  model and take it a few steps further with flox.

Teams love asdf because it helps make juggling different language versions transparent and simple.

Think outside the box. People often say they don't use Nix because it solves the same problems that containerization does. This is a half truth. Nix specializes in packaging software, while containerization excels at deploying software. They're best when used together.

Nix, flox, and docker containers are best when used together.

Nix and Docker containers: why not both?

Nix and Containers: why not both?

Nix in the Wild: PDT Partners

Graham's team focuses on high-performance computing, real-time trading, and full-stack development. Controlling configurations and ensuring reproducibility are critical aspects of their work, making Nix an ideal fit for their needs

In this post we had the pleasure to interview the head of Software Infrastructure at PDT Partners, a prominent quantitative investment manager, who shed light on how Nix has revolutionized their workflow.

Intro to the flox CLI, part two: aliases, vars, and hooks

The second part of this series explores the ways you can use flox environments to adjust the way software is configured and run.

The second part of this series explores the ways you can use flox environments to change the way software is configured and run.

flox can help you install and configure your Zsh and more

flox can help you install and configure your Zsh and more.

How to setup Zsh with flox

Intro to the flox CLI, part three: cloning, pushing, and pulling

The third part of this series shows how you can clone environments, layer them, and share them.

flox provides the reproducibility and portability of containers and the convenience of native development.

Think outside the [container] - develop natively with flox

Nix in the Wild: Project IDX

We caught up with Vova Kryachko from Project IDX and asked him to tell us how his team use Nix to deliver a flexible IDE experience in the cloud. Some of his answers may surprise you.

Anybody can view it, fork it, patch it, and use Nix to inspect the largest set of free software recipes in the world. People sometimes focus on Nix the language or Nix the package manager, but it's the Nixpkgs package collection that is core to the success of Nix.

The world we know today depends in fundamental ways on open source software.

Nixpkgs: the big recipe book of open source

Intro to the flox CLI, part one: easy environments

The flox CLI makes it easy to create ephemeral environments and try new tools without making a mess all over your desk.

Nix in the Wild: Looker (GCP)

In this latest edition, we had a chance to speak with Farid Zakaria from Google. He has a lot to say about motivating people to adopt new tools, and shared his story with us.

If Rust seeks to solve the problem of memory management at the program level, Nix seeks to solve dependency management at the build level, for any language. The problems are analogous, and the solutions go hand in hand.

The analogue for Rust’s safety guarantees is Nix’s determinism guarantees.

Rust & Nix: Parallels in Complexity Management

Both Homebrew and flox are package managers, but their approach to package management is very different.  Homebrew is a package manager primarily designed for MacOS. flox is built on Nix, a more advanced package manager designed for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems,  including MacOS. Let's explore how you would migrate from Homebrew to flox.

Both Homebrew and flox are package managers, but their approach to package management is very different.

Homebrew vs flox

Nix in the Wild: Prisma

In the world of software development, efficiency and scalability are paramount. Read how companies like Prisma are leading the way by using Nix to manage system dependencies and streamline projects.

Johannes Schickling's experiences serve as a testament to the power and potential of Nix

flox, Nix for Simplicity & Scale

flox is a first-of-its-kind environment manager. Seamlessly create new polyglot developer environments. Make everything reproducible from package management to builds.

flox is a first-of-its-kind environment manager. Seamlessly create new polyglot developer environments. Make everything reproducible from packages to builds.

Announcing flox

NixCon 2023: Recap & Videos

Nixcon 2023 in Darmstadt is a wrap! The team from flox was there, giving talks and having amazing conversations. In this post, find videos from our NixCon 2023 talks.

Nix: Pure Genius

I absolutely love it when hard problems are solved by challenging convention, peeling back layer after layer until pinpointing the core assumption that led us down the wrong path in the first place.

I love when hard problems are solved by challenging convention.

Nix in the Wild: The Flying Circus

Christian Theune has been working in IT since the late-1990s, and his experience gives him a clear understanding of what it takes to maintain applications and systems over the long term. In this edition of Nix in the Wild, he shares how they use NixOS to support long-term customers.

Happy New Year!

tired: year of the Linux desktop. wired: year of Nix everywhere.  2022 was a pivotal year for flox. We are delighted with the response towards the  platform and CLI, and very grateful for the many fascinating conversations we had with users.

Happy New Year! We hope you're as excited for 2023 as we are!