Applications

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This article or section is a candidate for merging with Nix ecosystem. While the scopes are different, an article with the "official tools" as its first section and "built with nix" as a further section under it may be much more fitting. Further information may be found in the relevant discussion page.

This article lists applications built for and with Nix; it constitutes a listing of what may be called the Extended Nix Ecosystem (see Nix Ecosystem for the Core Nix Ecosystem).

If you are looking for Linux software/applications you should look at Software.

Non-NixOS Distributions

Various applications built on top of Nix:

not-os - build a system firmware for embedded devices

Built with Nix

Projects which leverage Nix.

styx - Static site generator in Nix expression language
bionix - manage and execute bioinformatics pipelines
ethereum.nix - A collection of Nix packages and NixOS modules designed to make it easier to operate Ethereum related services and infrastructure
nixos-mailserver - A complete and Simple NixOS Mailserver

Nix Platform

Projects which add support (e.g. for extra platforms or major capabilities) to Nix.

nix-darwin - NixOS modules for Darwin
musnix - real-time audio modules for NixOS
nixGl - A wrapper to run OpenGL applications outside of NixOS

Nix Tooling

Various tools built for working with the Nix Ecosystem (e.g. enhancements or alternatives to core Nix tools).

General configuration

home-manager - System for managing a user environment using Nix
plasma-manager - manage KDE Plasma with Home-manager

Flakes

deploy-rs - Nix flake deployment tool
flake-utils-plus - Flake templates and helper library. Extension of below
flake-utils - Set of flake-building utility functions
flake-parts - Simplify Nix Flakes with the module system
snowfall - Unified configuration for systems, packages, modules, shells, templates, and more with Nix Flakes.

Clustering

nix-delegate - Convenient utility for distributed Nix builds

Comparison

nix-diff - Compare Nix derivations
niff - Compare two Nix expressions to determine what attributes changes
nvd - Nix/NixOS package version diff tool
lix-diff - Nix/NixOS closure diffing tool

Dependencies

nix-tree - Interactive dependency browser for Nix derivations
nix-visualize - Visualize the dependencies of a given package as a graph
npins - Simple tool for handling different types of dependencies in a Nix project
niv - Painless dependencies for Nix projects
Nixtamal - Fulfilling input pinning for Nix

Nix language tools

Language servers

nil - Nix language server, an incremental analysis assistant for writing in Nix.
nixd - Nix language server, newer than nil, with more features.

Static analysis / linters

deadnix - Removes unused code from .nix files
statix - Linter and suggestions for the nix programming language
nixf-diagnose - Linter - CLI wrapper around nixf-tidy (part of the nixd project).

Formatters

nixfmt - The official formatter for Nix code
alejandra - Unofficial Nix code formatter

Package maintenance

nix-update - Swiss-knife for updating nix packages.
nixpkgs-review - Review nixpkgs pull requests
nix-init - Generate Nix packages from URLs

Debugging

dwarffs - Fetches DWARF debug info files for gdb automatically from cache.nixos.org
nixseparatedebuginfod - Fetches debug symbols and source files for debuginfod-capables tools like gdb

Search

nix-index - Quickly locate nix packages with specific files
nix-du - Find which gc-roots take disk space in a nix store
nix-info - Homebrew info querying for Nix
userscan - Scans directories containing manually compiled programs and registers them with the Nix garbage collector
nix-search-cli - CLI for searching packages on search.nixos.org

Shell

nix-bash-completions - Bash completion for nix* commands
nixos-shell (Mic92) - Spawns lightweight nixos vms in a shell (like vagrant)
nixos-shell (chrisfarms) - like nix-shell, but for NixOS modules. Buildable version can be found in this fork
extra-container - Run declarative NixOS containers from the command line. Similar to nixos-shell (chrisfarms)

Other

nix-bundle - package Nix attributes into single-file executables.
nix-user-chroot - install Nix as an unpriviliged user on any system
nh - a rewrite of nixos-rebuild featuring diffs with nvd and a tree of builds with nix-output-manager, as well as other quality of life features such as package searching.
nixos-cli - an all-in-one tool to manage any NixOS installation with ease, combining the features of all the `nixos-*` commands.

Nix Operations

Operations tools for the Nix Ecosystem:

Official

Hydra - Nix's official continuous integration and build system.
NixOps - Nix's official (but unmaintained) tool for deploying to NixOS machines in a network or the cloud.

Deployment

Bento - a NixOS fleet manager supporting remote systems not up 24/7

colmena - a NixOS deployment tool
comin - A deployment tool to continuously pull from Git repositories.
deploy-rs - a simple multi-profile Nix-flake deploy tool

krops - a lightweight toolkit to deploy NixOS systems, remotely or locally
lollypops - a parallel and stateless NixOS deployment tool
Morph - a NixOS deployment tool
Nixinate - A Nix flake library to provide app outputs for managing existing NixOS hosts over SSH.
nixos-build --target-host
NixOps - [Not recommended for new projects] a tool for deploying to NixOS machines in a network or cloud.
Nixus - an experimental NixOS deployment tool

Docker

Arion - configure Docker Compose with Nix modules
Nixery - ad-hoc container images from Nix

Kubernetes

kubenix - Kubernetes resource builder written in Nix
nix-kubernetes - Kubernetes deployment manager written in nix

Alternative nix implementations & parser

hnix (haskell, parser & evaluator)
rnix (rust, parser)
go-nix (go, parser & nix-compatible file hasher)
nix-idea (java, parser)
lix (c++, fork of NixOS/nix)
snix (rust, cli & evaluator & store)

Additional unofficial ecosystem

None of the services are required to use Nix. None of these services are affiliated with the NixOS Foundation.

Cachix: binary caches as a service. Free for public caches, subscription for private token-protected caches.
Hercules CI: simplify your CI setup with stateless build agents. Free for open source, per-user subscription for private repositories.
Garnix: nix CI, caching (open beta) and cloud hosting (private alpha) based on Nix as a service. Currently free, but offers commerical plans.
nixbuild.net: remote Nix builders as a service for x86_64 and AArch64. Pay-per-use.