Translations:Nix (package manager)/1/en

Introduction to Nix

Fundamental concepts

• Nix (language)
• Nix (package manager)
• Nix store

Tools and applications

• Nix (command)
• NixOS

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Disambiguation: This article is about the Nix package manager. Not to be confused with the Nix ecosystem, the Nix language or the Nix command.

Nix is a package manager and build system that parses reproducible build instructions specified in the Nix Expression Language, a pure functional language with lazy evaluation. Nix expressions are pure functionstaking dependencies as arguments and producing a derivation specifying a reproducible build environment for the package. Nix stores the results of the build in unique addresses specified by a hash of the complete dependency tree, creating an immutable package store (aka the nix store) that allows for atomic upgrades, rollbacks and concurrent installation of different versions of a package, essentially eliminating dependency hell.