Tools to make nix nicer to use
Project description
Nox is a small tool that makes the use of the Nix package manager easier.
Nox is written in Python 3 and requires nix 1.8 and git. It is released under MIT license.
Try it
You can install it from nixpkgs by running nix-env -i nox.
To try the last version, just clone the repository, run nix-build, and run the resulting binaries in result/bin. To install it, run nix-env -if ..
Search
Just run nox QUERY to search for a nix package. The underlying nix-env invocation is cached to make the search faster than your usual nix-env -qa | grep QUERY.
Once you have the results, type the numbers of the packages to install.
Bonus: if you enter the letter ‘s’ at the beginning of the package numbers list, a nix-shell will be started with those packages instead.
Review
The nox-review command helps you find what has changed in nixpkgs, and build changed packages, so you’re sure they are not broken. There are 3 modes:
nox-review revs CURRENT_REV REFERENCE_REV finds the differences between two nixpkgs revisions, and builds those packages as they are in CURRENT_REV.
nox-review wip compares the nixpkgs in the current working dir against a commit, so you can check that your changes break nothing. Defaults to comparing to HEAD (the last commit), but you can change it: nox-review wip --against master^'.
nox-review pr PR finds the packages touched by the given PR and build them.
Experimental
I’m working on a new command, nox-update, that will display information about what is about to be updated, especially giving info not provided by nixos-rebuild:
Why is everything being installed?
Which are package upgrades?
Which are expression changes?
Which are only rebuilds trigerred by dependency changes?
Especially, what package triggered the rebuild?
A picture is better than a thousand words, so here is what it looks like for now:
Project details
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