An easy way to manage local packages with Nix

Like pip install --user, but on steroids.

packages.nix defines a list of packages.

# Add everything in `packages.nix` to user profile
nix-env --install --file "packages.nix"
# Replace user profile with `packages.nix`
nix-env --install --file "packages.nix" --remove-all

# Rollback to previous version of user profile
nix-env --rollback

nix/sources.json references repositories with Nix expressions. nix/sources.nix defines a mapping from source to its path for every source in sources.json. niv is a tool that maintains nix/sources.json.

# Add/update/remove sources
niv add "NixOS/nixpkgs" --name "unstable" --branch "master"
niv update "unstable"
niv drop "stable" # yolo