Nix 生态系统
“Nix核心生态”是一组技术，旨在以可重复的方式构建、声明式配置和管理软件包和系统及其依赖项。它通过利用名为Nix Language的动态、函数式和惰性求值的领域特定语言（DSL）将函数式编程范式从程序转换为系统来实现这一点，用于指定可重现的软件建构。
此外，Nix社区开发了许多其他的 应用程序 (“Nix扩展生态”)，这些应用程序使用并为核心技术提供支持。
官方生态
| Component | Manual | Description | Use | License |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NixOS | NixOS Manual | A Linux distribution with all components built by Nix, and thus supporting reproducible and declarative system-wide configuration management as well as atomic upgrades and rollbacks. | Declaratively configure desktops, servers & clusters | MIT |
| Nixpkgs | Nixpkgs Manual | The largest community maintained Nix package and NixOS module repository; standard releases of NixOS are hosted here. | Share Nix packages & NixOS modules | MIT |
| Hydra | Hydra Manual | A Nix based continuous build system. | CI build farms | GPL-3.0 |
| Nix | Nix Manual | A package manager that parses Nix expressions specifying reproducible build, putting the result in a store address with a hash of the dependency tree, sidestepping dependency hell and supporting multiversion installs and rollbacks. | Reproducible builds & package management in Linux & Darwin | LGPL-2.1 |
|
NixOS
A Linux distribution and configuration system built using Nixpkgs |
|
|
Nixpkgs
A large, community-maintained repository of packages |
Hydra
A continuous build system built on Nix |
|
Nix
A pure and functional build system | |
Usage of NixOS
Users install the NixOS distribution on their computers just as any other Linux distribution. They read about packages to install and configuration options in Nixpgs via https://search.nixos.org and this wiki. They use the Nix language to declaratively describe in a text file what software packages should be installed and how the system should be configured. They run 2 command line programs in a terminal to transform the system into the described system. They use the system as any other Linux system.
Development of NixOS
Developers of NixOS mainly work on Nixpkgs to describe in text files in Nix language how software packages should be build. After peer review these changes are integrated in Nixpkgs. Some of these packages are pre built on Hydra to reduce the update time for NixOS users.