psst, hey kid, wanna read a weird programming book
Ian Henry
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How to Learn Nix

Opening remarks

  1. What's all this about?
  2. Prior knowledge

Reading the Nix manual

  1. What we talk about when we talk about Nix
  2. Quick starts, full hearts
  3. Basic package management
  4. Profiles
  5. Garbage collection
  6. Channels
  7. Learning to share
  8. My first derivation
  9. Okay my actual first derivation
  10. The Nix expression language
  11. Derivations
  12. Built-in Functions
  13. Advanced Topics
  14. Command Reference
  15. Configuration

Interlude: in which we follow our hearts, however briefly

  1. So I read the manual huh
  2. Switching from Homebrew to Nix
  3. My first Nix bug
  4. My first package upgrade
  5. Setting up a declarative user environment

Reading the Nixpkgs manual

  1. How to learn Nixpkgs
  2. Overlays
  3. Overriding
  4. An infinite list of functions
  5. Even more functions, somehow
  6. The standard environment
  7. Derivations in detail
  8. Cross-compilation
  9. Platform notes
  10. Builders
  11. Languages and frameworks
  12. Random package grab-bag
  13. How to give back

Documentation behind us, we set out on our own

  1. So I read the other manual, huh
  2. Saving your shell

Oh right forgot about Nix Pills

  1. Nix Pills

Our whole lives ahead of us

  1. How to install Python
  2. Open questions
  3. Ambiguous packages
  4. Running zsh in nix-shell

Nix 2.4 slithers to life

  1. My first brush with flakes
  2. More flakes, unfortunately
  3. Fancy new profiles
  4. Chipping away at flakes
  5. New and unimproved shells

Is this thing still on?

  1. Installing (single-user) Nix on macOS
  2. nix-direnv is a huge quality of life improvement