NixOS community

Contributing to NixOS

It’s pretty easy to modify NixOS. All you need to do is get a copy of the Nixpkgs repository (which contains the NixOS sources as well):

git clone git://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs.git

After making modifications to the sources, you can use them as follows:

nixos-rebuild switch -I nixpkgs=/path/to/my/nixpkgs

If you think your changes are useful to the rest of humanity, then please open a pull request on GitHub, or send a patch to the Discourse forum. If you want to contribute regularly, you may want to ask for commit access to our GitHub repositories (please ask Eelco, or on the #nixos IRC channel).

Bugs

If you think you’ve found a bug, please report it in the Nixpkgs issue tracker (please use the label 6.topic: nixos).

Documentation

The NixOS manual has a whole chapter on NixOS hacking. Also, check out the sections on the syntax of NixOS modules and on how to add your own packages.
The Nixpkgs manual has a lot of information on how to add packages to Nixpkgs. In particular, you should check out the “Quick Start” chapter for an overview of the process of adding a package.
The Nix manual has a chapter on writing Nix expressions, including the syntax and semantic of the Nix expression language.
There is a paper on NixOS has a lot of information on the NixOS module system (especially section 6).

Source repositories

The sources of all Nix-related projects are in the NixOS organization on GitHub. NixOS lives in the nixos subdirectory of the Nixpkgs repository.

Discourse

discourse.nixos.org hosts a community of Nix developers and users, providing resources to help you:

find answers to your Nix/Nixpkgs/NixOS/NixOps questions
discuss current and future directions of the project
evangelise and promote Nix in your community

IRC channel

The NixOS developers hang out on the #nixos channel on irc.freenode.net. This channel is logged.

Blogs

Planet aggregates blog posts written by the community and /r/NixOS also contains useful resources.

To add yourself to Planet NixOS, fork the nixos-org-configurations repo and add the feed source to planet-feeds.nix then make a pull request.

Meetups

Europe:

America:

Asia:

Tokyo NixOS Meetup

Continuous builds

Hydra continuously builds NixOS:

Status of the master branch, used to update the nixos-unstable channel.
Status of the release-19.09 branch, used to update the nixos-19.09 channel.

Commercial support

For professional support, a number of consulting companies are available (sorted in alphabetical order):

Donations

The infrastructure for NixOS and related projects is maintained by a nonprofit organization, the NixOS Foundation. To ensure the continuity and expansion of the NixOS infrastructure, we are looking for donations to our organization.

You can donate to the NixOS foundation by using Open Collective:

The NixOS Foundation also accepts donations via SEPA bank transfer. Please send payments to:

Stichting NixOS Foundation, De Meern, The Netherlands

IBAN: NL45 KNAB 0732 3586 98
BIC:  KNABNL2H

Please add your name and purpose (donation) in the description of the transfer!

If you would like to support us for amounts above 2000 euro per year, please contact us at foundation@nixos.org, as this will have tax implications.

Acknowledgments

The Nix package manager was developed by Eelco Dolstra as part of his PhD research in the TraCE project, funded by the Jacquard programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and SERC. The first prototype of NixOS was developed by Armijn Hemel as his master’s thesis project. Hydra, the Nix-based continuous build system, was developed as part of the LaQuSo Buildfarm project, funded by NIRICT / LaQuSo.

The NixOS community has been supported by various companies and institutes over the years, for which we are very grateful. The following companies and institutes have supported the development of NixOS and the infrastructure that is needed to support it. If you would like to support us as well, please contact Rob Vermaas.