nixpkgs-unfree - nixpkgs with the unfree bits enabled

STATUS: alpha

The nixpkgs project contains package definitions for free and unfree packages but only builds free packages. This project is complementary. We're enabling the unfree bits and making the flake use-case a bit easier to use.

In the future, we would also like to evolve this project to build and cache the unfree packages.

Features

Nix run

Thanks to this flake, it's shorter to run unfree packages. Eg:

$ nix run github:numtide/nixpkgs-unfree/nixos-unstable#slack

Vs:

$ NIXPKGS_ALLOW_UNFREE=1 nix run nixpkgs/nixos-unstable#slack --impure

See the supported channels section to find out which channels are being synched.

Flake usage

If your flake depends on unfree packages, you can point it to this project to avoid creating more instances of nixpkgs. See https://discourse.nixos.org/t/1000-instances-of-nixpkgs/17347 for a more in-depth explanation of the issue.

Here is how you can replace your instance of nixpkgs with unfree packages enabled:

{
  inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:numtide/nixpkgs-unfree?ref=nixos-unstable";

  inputs.otherdep.url = "github:otheruser/otherdep";
  inputs.otherdep.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, ... }: { ... };
}

Or, potentially, you might want to explicitly access unfree packages and have a separate instance:

{
  # The main nixpkgs instance
  inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";

  # The unfree instance
  inputs.nixpkgs-unfree.url = "github:numtide/nixpkgs-unfree";
  inputs.nixpkgs-unfree.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, nixpkgs-unfree }: { ... };
}

Flake templates

For new flakes, you can use also use our templates like this:

$ nix flake init -t github:numtide/nixpkgs-unfree
$ nix flake init -t github:numtide/nixpkgs-unfree#devShell # for mkShell based setup

Synched channels

The following channels are synched daily with upstream:

• nixos-unstable
• nixpkgs-unstable
• nixos-24.05

Let us know if any other channel is needed.

FAQ

nixpkgs instances

This repository includes a trace warning for code that import nixpkgs.

If another input depends on it, you can bypass the warning by passing the real nixpkgs to it.

Before:

{
  inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:numtide/nixpkgs-unfree?ref=nixos-unstable";

  inputs.otherdep.url = "github:otheruser/otherdep";
  inputs.otherdep.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
}

Assuming that "otherdep" creates a new instance of nixpkgs, change the inputs to:

{
  inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:numtide/nixpkgs-unfree?ref=nixos-unstable";

  inputs.otherdep.url = "github:otheruser/otherdep";
  inputs.otherdep.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs/nixpkgs";
}

With that, it will access the same version of nixpkgs as the main project.

Credits

The first implementation of that idea was done by @domenkozar at https://github.com/cachix/nixpkgs-unfree-redistributable.

Terms and Conditions

All the code in this repository is published under the MIT and will always remain under an OSI-compliant license.

If you're interested in supporting this project, get in touch!.