Development environments with Nix

note, Jun 25, 2023 on Mitja Felicijan's blog

Nix is amazing for making reproducible cross OS development environment.

First you need to install Nix package -manager.

  • Create a file shell.nix in your project folder.
  • In the section that has python3 etc add programs you want to use. These can -be CLI or GUI applications. It doesn't matter to Nix.
{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:
-  pkgs.mkShell {
-    nativeBuildInputs = with pkgs.buildPackages; [
-	  python3
-	  tinycc
-	];
-}
-

And then run it nix-shell. By default it will look for shell.nix file. If -you want to specify a different file use nix-shell file.nix. That is about it.

When the shell is spawned it could happen that your PS1 prompt will be -overwritten and your prompt will look differently. In that case you need to -either do NIX_SHELL_PRESERVE_PROMPT=1 nix shell or add -NIX_SHELL_PRESERVE_PROMPT variable to your bashrc or zshrc file and set it -to 1.

I also have a modified PS1 prompt for Bash that I use and it also catches the -usage of Nix shell.

NIX_SHELL_PRESERVE_PROMPT=1
-
-parse_git_branch() {
-	git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/ (\1)/'
-}
-
-is_inside_nix_shell() {
-	nix_shell_name="$(basename "$IN_NIX_SHELL" 2>/dev/null)"
-	if [[ -n "$nix_shell_name" ]]; then
-		echo " \e[0;36m(nix-shell)\e[0m"
-	fi
-}
-
-export PS1="[\033[38;5;9m\]\u@\h\[$(tput sgr0)\]]$(is_inside_nix_shell)\[\033[33m\]\$(parse_git_branch)\[\033[00m\] \w\[$(tput sgr0)\] \n$ "
-

And this is what it looks like when you are in a Nix shell. Otherwise that part -of prompt is omitted

PS1 Prompt

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