nix.dev/maintainers/working_groups/learning_journey/documentation-survey.md

Documentation survey

To better navigate the material and judge its relevance, every entry should provide

• Title (URL)
• Brief summary
• Video length or estimated reading time
• Principal Author(s)
• Year created (last update or maintenance status)

Tutorials

Nix

• Nix Pills Chapter 3: Enter the Environment

  Installation with nix-env, rollback and switching generations, showing references and closures.

  • Reading time: 7 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

• Nix Pills Chapter 6. Our First Derivation

  Fundamentals of Nix derivations, function and concept, nix show-derivation. Derivation set and its attributes.

  • Reading time: 20 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

• Nix Pills Chapter 7. Working Derivation

  Fundamentals of Nix derivations, bash, nix repl, nix-store, nix-instantiate, nix show-derivation . Packaging a simple C program, inherit keyword.

  • Reading time: 16 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

• Nix Pills Chapter 11. Garbage Collector

  Fundamentals of Nix garbage collection, nix-collect-garbage, nix-env, nix-store, nix-build.

  • Reading time: 14 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/nix-search-paths.html

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/nix-store-paths.html

  Store paths and how they are computed, nix-store, nix-hash, nix derivation show, nix repl.

  • Reading time: 6 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

Nix language

• https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/nix/

• https://nixcloud.io/tour/?id=1

• https://medium.com/@MrJamesFisher/nix-by-example-a0063a1a4c55

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCapIx9heBw&list=PL-saUBvIJzOkjAw_vOac75v-x6EzNzZq-&index=5

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/basics-of-language.html

• Nix Pills Chapter 4. The basics of the language

  Fundamentals of Nix language, types, expressions nix repl.

  • Reading time: 16 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/functions-and-imports.html

Nixpkgs

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGekN4pDExY&list=PL-saUBvIJzOkjAw_vOac75v-x6EzNzZq-&index=6

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4sv2M9jRLg

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/generic-builders.html

• Nix Pills Chapter 8. Generic Builders

  Generalized building process (C language), derivation, nix repl, nix-build.

  • Reading time: 14 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/automatic-runtime-dependencies.html

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/developing-with-nix-shell.html

• Nix Pills Chapter 10. Developing with nix-shell

  Making a development environment from a derivation that can be launched with nix-shell, builtins.derivation.

  • Reading time: 9 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/inputs-design-pattern.html

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/callpackage-design-pattern.html

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/override-design-pattern.html

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/nixpkgs-parameters.html

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/nixpkgs-overriding-packages.html

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/fundamentals-of-stdenv.html

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/basic-dependencies-and-hooks.html

NixOS

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf0nIn2oS8A&list=PL-saUBvIJzOkjAw_vOac75v-x6EzNzZq-&index=4

How-To Guides

Nix

• https://nix.dev/tutorials/ad-hoc-developer-environments#what-is-a-shell-environment
• https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix_Cookbook#Managing_storage

Nix language

• https://nix.dev/anti-patterns/language.html

Nixpkgs

• https://nixos.wiki/wiki/FAQ
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_IZ2EfW_8U
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5K_2RSjbdXc
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGAL3gMXvug
• https://nix.dev/tutorials/towards-reproducibility-pinning-nixpkgs
• https://nix.dev/tutorials/declarative-and-reproducible-developer-environments
• https://nix.dev/tutorials/cross-compilation.html
• https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable

NixOS

• https://nix.dev/tutorials/building-bootable-iso-image.html
• https://nix.dev/tutorials/deploying-nixos-using-terraform.html
• https://nix.dev/tutorials/installing-nixos-on-a-raspberry-pi.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkDYmvKINm8
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_vbddNXtg
• https://github.com/noteed/nix-notes
• https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/

Explanation

Nix

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/index.html
• partially in chapter https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/automatic-runtime-dependencies.html
• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/garbage-collector.html
• https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf

Nix language

• https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf

Nixpkgs

• Nix Pills Chapter 6: Our First Derivation

  Explains derivations; the derivation function, its attribute set, .drv and 'out' files. Explains outpath. Regarding nixpkgs, shows how to bring nixpkgs into scope and how to refer to a package using its outpath. Accessing files underneath a package's out.

  • Reading time: 25 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015
  • Updated 2017

• Nix Pills Chapter 7: Working Derivation

  Creating a working derivation. Using nix repl: bash as a builder; the args attribute; creating in $out; the builder environment; packaging a C program. Using a .nix file to define the derivation: import function; inherit keyword; using nix-build. Explains how to use gcc, bash and coreutils from nixpkgs.

  • Reading time: 15 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/inputs-design-pattern.html

  Explains the inputs design pattern as used by nixpkgs. A single customizable repository having a top-level Nix expression, with one expression for each package.

  • Reading time: 20 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

• https://nixos.org/guides/nix-pills/callpackage-design-pattern.html

  Introduces the callPackage pattern used extensively in Nixpkgs. Shows how to write and use the function; use builtins.functionArgs to determine arguments, use builtins.intersectAttrs to combine attributes, and override arguments when needed.

  • Reading time: 15 min
  • Author: Luca Bruno
  • Created: 2015 (effectively unmaintained since 2017)

• partially in https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf

• Connecting Bash to Nix

  Configure derivation using only Bash and builtins. Explains builtins.derivation, attributes, nix build, store path hierarchy, imports. Relates this to `stdenv.mkDerivation.

  • Reading time: 10 min
  • Author: Ross Light
  • Created: 2023

NixOS

• https://nixos.org/docs/SCR-2005-091.pdf (2006)

Reference

Nix

• https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/command-ref/command-ref.html
• https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf

Nix language

• https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf
• https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/expressions/writing-nix-expressions.html
• https://github.com/tazjin/nix-1p

Nixpkgs

• https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable

NixOS

• https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable