To start developing and contributing to the project, it is recommended to configure your system to use the development shell provided by the Nix flake. The following sections will guide you on how to install and configure Nix, to make use of the flake.
This section describes the process of setting up the Nix package manager on your OS.
Installing Nix on your Linux distro is straightforward. It is recommended to install it in the 'Multi-user' configuration. Make sure you have systemd on your system and SELinux is disabled.
To install Nix, run the following command in your terminal:
sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon
You may have to install the curl command if it's not already
installed on your system:
sudo apt install -y curl
In order to install Nix on a Windows machine, WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) is required. Ensure you have at least Windows build 1945 installed. Check your build version using the following PowerShell or CMD snippet:
systeminfo | findstr /B /C:"OS Name" /B /C:"OS Version"
If your build number is greater than 1945, you can proceed with the automatic installation. Otherwise, you'll have to set up WSL manually or update Windows.
The automatic setup of WSL2 is simple. By running the following snippet in your terminal, Ubuntu will be installed as your default Linux distribution.
wsl --install
The distro setup will ask you for a username and password. Remember, that the password will not be echoed.
Next, make sure to install Nix by running the following command in your terminal:
sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --daemon
Once the setup finishes, you can start using Nix after you've reloaded your shell.
In order to set up WSL2 manually on older builds of windows, please refer to the Microsoft documentation.
In Nix, flakes are still an experimental feature. To use our flake,
you'll have to enable flakes and preferably nix-command. You can
achieve this by editing the Nix config file.
Create the Nix config directory, if it doesn't already exist:
mkdir -p ~/.config/nix
After you've created the directory run the following command, to
enable flakes and nix-command:
echo "experimental-features = flakes nix-command" > ~/.config/nix/nix.conf
Now you'll be able to use the new nix command and take advantage of
flakes.
To enter the development shell, navigate to the jari project directory:
cd jari/
Then, simply run the following command:
nix develop .
The above will have put you in the development shell and you're now ready to hack away!
Running nix develop . can get quite tedious after some time. To
mitigate having to manually enter the development shell, we can use
direnv with the
nix-direnv addon. The
program will automatically source the flakes' shell and ensure that
you're all set up.
First we'll have to install direnv and nix-direnv using our newly
enabled nix command:
nix profile install nixpkgs#direnv nixpkgs#nix-direnv
After that, direnv needs to be configured to use the nix-direnv 'plugin':
mkdir -p ~/.config/direnv;
echo "source \$HOME/.nix-profile/share/nix-direnv/direnvrc" > ~/.config/direnv/direnvrc
Now you're ready to use direnv! You may enter the jari directory
and allow the flake to be sourced automatically:
direnv allow .