Contributing to nixpkgs

Table of Content

Initial setup
Packaging
Pull request
Review process

Initial setup

Forking

Fork http://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/<user>/nixpkgs

Branching

$ git branch -c <pkgname>
$ git checkout <pkgname>

Packaging

Maintainers

Not yet a maintainer?
Add yourself to nixpkgs/maintainers/maintainer-list.nix
This will be a seperate commit from the packages
- $ git commit -m "maintainers: add <user>"

Creating

Package

Find an appropriate location in nixpkgs/pkgs/
$ mkdir <pkgsname>
$ touch <pkgsname>/default.nix
Add the package to nixpkgs/pkgs/top-level/
- Generic: all-packages.nix
- Kernel: linux-kernels.nix
- etc..

module

In these modules you will create the options to set up the package in a system
$ touch nixpkgs/nixos/<subdir>/<pkgname>.nix
Add module to nixpkgs/nixos/modules/module-list.nix

Testing on system

Package

Inside nixpkgs

$ nix-build -A <pkgsname>
$ ./result/bin/<pkgsname>

Module

Recommended to do in virtual machine

Add new package and/or module to general config /etc/nixos/configuration.nix
$ sudo nixos-rebuild -I nixpkgs=$PWD switch

Editing an existing packages

Just find the package in the repo and edit
Personally I use $ grep -Frwl <pkgname> to quickly find the package in nixpkgs/pkgs/

Pull request

Commit

See paragraph packaging-maintainer. If you are not a maintainer yet, add yourself to the list and commit.
Before committing, read https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md. Make needed changes.
New package
- $ git commit -m "<pkgsname>: init at <version>"

Push

$ git push origin <branch (pkgsname)>

Pull

Move to your github repo
Create pull-request

Review process

If changes are required, add new commits.
When done, squash commits.
$ git rebase -i HEAD~<# prev commits>
- change pick to squash on all commits that need to be squash to initial commit.
- change title at the top of next menu if needed. You can uncomment all other commit titles.
- $ git push -f origin <branch (pkgsname)
After a merge to master, you can delete the branch.
Propagation to nixos-unstable from master can take a while (multiple days). Sit back and relax!