The Nix User Repository (NUR) is community-driven meta repository for Nix packages. It provides access to user repositories that contain package descriptions (Nix expressions) and allows you to install packages by referencing them via attributes. In contrast to Nixpkgs, packages are built from source and are not reviewed by any Nixpkgs member.
The NUR was created to share new packages from the community in a faster and more decentralized way.
NUR automatically checks its list of repositories and performs evaluation checks before it propagates the updates.
First include NUR in your packageOverrides:
To make NUR accessible for your login user, add the following to ~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix:
{
packageOverrides = pkgs: {
nur = import (builtins.fetchTarball "https://github.com/nix-community/NUR/archive/master.tar.gz") {
inherit pkgs;
};
};
}For NixOS add the following to your /etc/nixos/configuration.nix:
{
nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides = pkgs: {
nur = import (builtins.fetchTarball "https://github.com/nix-community/NUR/archive/master.tar.gz") {
inherit pkgs;
};
};
}Using builtins.fetchTarball without a sha256 will only cache the download for 1 hour by default, so you need internet access almost every time you build something. You can pin the version if you don't want that:
builtins.fetchTarball {
# Get the revision by choosing a version from https://github.com/nix-community/NUR/commits/master
url = "https://github.com/nix-community/NUR/archive/3a6a6f4da737da41e27922ce2cfacf68a109ebce.tar.gz";
# Get the hash by running `nix-prefetch-url --unpack <url>` on the above url
sha256 = "04387gzgl8y555b3lkz9aiw9xsldfg4zmzp930m62qw8zbrvrshd";
}Then packages can be used or installed from the NUR namespace.
$ nix-shell -p nur.repos.mic92.inxi
nix-shell> inxi
CPU: Dual Core Intel Core i7-5600U (-MT MCP-) speed/min/max: 3061/500/3200 MHz Kernel: 4.14.51 x86_64
Up: 20h 55m Mem: 12628.4/15926.8 MiB (79.3%) HDD: 465.76 GiB (39.3% used) Procs: 409
Shell: bash 4.4.23 inxi: 3.0.10or
$ nix-env -iA nur.repos.mic92.inxior
# configuration.nix
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
nur.repos.mic92.inxi
];Each contributor can register their repository under a name and is responsible for its content.
NUR does not check the repository for malicious content on a regular basis and it is recommended to check the expressions before installing them.
If you intend to use modules, overlays or library functions in your NixOS configuration.nix, you need to take care to not introduce infinite recursion. Specifically, you need to import NUR like this in the modules:
{ pkgs, config, lib, ... }:
let
nur-no-pkgs = import (builtins.fetchTarball "https://github.com/nix-community/NUR/archive/master.tar.gz") {};
in {
imports = [
nur-no-pkgs.repos.paul.modules.foo
];
nixpkgs.overlays = [
nur-no-pkgs.repos.ben.overlays.bar
];
}At the moment we do not have a dedicated package search available. However our nur-combined repository contains all nix expressions from all users and can be search via github.
First create a repository that contains a default.nix in its top-level directory.
We also provide repository template that contains
a prepared directory structure.
DO NOT import packages for example with import <nixpkgs> {};.
Instead take all dependency you want to import from Nixpkgs from the given pkgs argument.
Each repository should return a set of Nix derivations:
{ pkgs }:
{
inxi = pkgs.callPackage ./inxi {};
}In this example inxi would be a directory containing a default.nix:
{ stdenv, fetchFromGitHub
, makeWrapper, perl
, dmidecode, file, hddtemp, nettools, iproute, lm_sensors, usbutils, kmod, xlibs
}:
let
path = [
dmidecode file hddtemp nettools iproute lm_sensors usbutils kmod
xlibs.xdpyinfo xlibs.xprop xlibs.xrandr
];
in stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
name = "inxi-${version}";
version = "3.0.14-1";
src = fetchFromGitHub {
owner = "smxi";
repo = "inxi";
rev = version;
sha256 = "0wyv8cqwy7jlv2r3j7w8ri73iywawnaihww39vlpnpjjcz1b37hw";
};
installPhase = ''
install -D -m755 inxi $out/bin/inxi
install -D inxi.1 $out/man/man1/inxi.1
wrapProgram $out/bin/inxi \
--prefix PATH : ${ stdenv.lib.makeBinPath path }
'';
buildInputs = [ perl ];
nativeBuildInputs = [ makeWrapper ];
meta = with stdenv.lib; {
description = "System information tool";
homepage = https://github.com/smxi/inxi;
license = licenses.gpl3;
platforms = platforms.linux;
};
}You can use nix-shell or nix-build to build your packages:
$ nix-shell --arg pkgs 'import <nixpkgs> {}' -A inxi
nix-shell> inxi
nix-shell> find $buildInputs$ nix-build --arg pkgs 'import <nixpkgs> {}' -A inxiFor development convenience, you can also set a default value for the pkgs argument:
{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:
{
inxi = pkgs.callPackage ./inxi {};
}$ nix-build -A inxiAdd your own repository to in the repos.json of NUR:
$ git clone https://github.com/nix-community/NUR
# open and modify repos.json in an editor{
"repos": {
"mic92": {
"url": "https://github.com/Mic92/nur-packages"
},
"<fill-your-repo-name>": {
"url": "https://github.com/<your-user>/<your-repo>"
}
}
}At the moment each URL must point to a git repository. By running bin/nur update
the corresponding repos.json.lock is updated and the repository is tested. This will
perform also an evaluation check, which must be passed for your repository. Commit the changed
repos.json but NOT repos.json.lock
$ git add repos.json
$ ./bin/nur format-manifest # ensure repos.json is sorted alphabetically
$ git commit -m "add <your-repo-name> repository"
$ git push
and open a pull request towards https://github.com/nix-community/NUR.
At the moment repositories should be buildable on Nixpkgs unstable. Later we will add options to also provide branches for other Nixpkgs channels.
To use a different file instead of default.nix to load packages from, set the file
option to a path relative to the repository root:
{
"repos": {
"mic92": {
"url": "https://github.com/Mic92/nur-packages",
"file": "subdirectory/default.nix"
}
}
}By default we only check for repository updates once a day with an automatic
cron job in travis ci to update our lock file repos.json.lock.
To update NUR faster, you can use our service at https://nur-update.herokuapp.com/
after you have pushed an update to your repository, e.g.:
curl -XPOST https://nur-update.herokuapp.com/update?repo=mic92Check out the github page for further details
To fetch git submodules in repositories set submodules:
{
"repos": {
"mic92": {
"url": "https://github.com/Mic92/nur-packages",
"submodules": true
}
}
}It is also possible to define more than just packages. In fact any Nix expression can be used.
To make NixOS modules, overlays and library functions more discoverable, we propose to put them in their own namespace within the repository. This allows us to make them later searchable, when the indexer is ready.
NixOS modules should be placed in the modules attribute:
{ pkgs }: {
modules = import ./modules;
}# modules/default.nix
{
example-module = ./example-module.nix;
}An example can be found here. Modules should be defined as paths, not functions, to avoid conflicts if imported from multiple locations.
For overlays use the overlays attribute:
# default.nix
{
overlays = {
hello-overlay = import ./hello-overlay;
};
}# hello-overlay/default.nix
self: super: {
hello = super.hello.overrideAttrs (old: {
separateDebugInfo = true;
});
}Put reusable nix functions that are intend for public use in the lib attribute:
{ pkgs }:
with pkgs.lib;
{
lib = {
hexint = x: hexvals.${toLower x};
hexvals = listToAttrs (imap (i: c: { name = c; value = i - 1; })
(stringToCharacters "0123456789abcdef"));
};
}You can override repositories using repoOverrides argument.
This allows to test changes before publishing.
{
packageOverrides = pkgs: {
nur = import (builtins.fetchTarball "https://github.com/nix-community/NUR/archive/master.tar.gz") {
inherit pkgs;
repoOverrides = {
mic92 = import ../nur-packages;
## remote locations are also possible:
# mic92 = import (builtins.fetchTarball "https://github.com/your-user/nur-packages/archive/master.tar.gz");
};
};
};
}
- When adding packages to your repository make sure they build and set
meta.brokenattribute to true otherwise. - Supply meta attributes as described in the Nixpkgs manual, so packages can be found by users.
- Keep your repositories slim - they are downloaded by users and our evaluator and needs to be hashed.
- Reuse packages from Nixpkgs when applicable, so the binary cache can be leveraged
Examples for packages that could be in NUR:
- Packages that are only interesting for a small audience
- Pre-releases
- Old versions of packages that are no longer in Nixpkgs, but needed for legacy reason (i.e. old versions of GCC/LLVM)
- Automatic generated package sets (i.e. generate packages sets from PyPi or CPAN)
- Software with opinionated patches
- Experiments
To make it easier to review nix expression NUR makes it obvious where the package is coming from. If NUR would be an overlay malicious repositories could override existing packages. Also without coordination multiple overlays could easily introduce dependency cycles.
You can chat with us on IRC in channel #nixos-nur. Apart from that we also read posts on https://discourse.nixos.org.
- Implement a search to find packages