Reflections on the Nix build system DSL

Eelco Dolstra

Nix is a purely functional build system: it builds immutable artifacts from a description in a simple purely functional DSL. It is used on its own and as the basis for NixOS, a Linux distribution with a declarative configuration model. In this talk I’ll reflect on the successes and failures of the Nix DSL: why it makes sense to use a DSL over a general-purpose language, but also why a sufficiently powerful DSL turns out to be both a blessing and a curse.

Part of the Symposium on Build Systems

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