Shix

Create a fully custom, nix-enhanced, tailored workspaces, sandboxed using bubblewrap.

Non-NixOS usage

You can clone this repo anywhere in your filesystem, copy the example shell in the shells/ directory to create your very own shell.

Then, start it up using nix run /path/to/your/repo#<shell name>.

Note that as it uses flakes, you can run a shell stored in a remote git repository like so: nix run <url to repo>#<shell name>

NixOS usage

You can install a handy shix by importing the NixOS module.

It will export the configuration options:

shix = {
   remoteRepoUrl = "url to remote repo where your shells are stored";
   pullBeforeEditing = true; # Every time we edit a shell, pull from remote repo before
   pushAfterEditing = true; # Every time we edit a shell, push to remote repo
   baseDir = "path to shix dir on filesystem";
   shellEditCommand = "neovim";
};

Then you'll be able to use the command shix to use the shells:

shix init    # Clones the remote repo into the folder
shix edit <name>    # Edit the shell <name> / create it
shix <name>    # Starts the shell <name>
shix remote <url> <name>   # Starts a remote shell <name> from repository at URL <url>

Note: The url has to be formatted in a way that nix can use it, like "github:", "git+ssh:", etc ...

Overlay

If you want to create a shell in another project, you can import the overlay. It will provide the function lib.shix.mkShell that takes a shell file as an argument, and will output a derivation for a shell script starting the environment.

Required dependencies

• git
• nix with enabled flakes and nix-commands.

Tools for development

Some of the utilities used for this tool are located in tools/, including:

• Tmux configuration utility (in ./tools/tmux.nix)
• Bash utility (in ./tools/bash.nix)
• Terminal colors utility (in ./tools/colors.nix)
• PS1 definition utility (in ./tools/ps1.nix)

The code used to generate the shell can be read in ./tools/generate_shell.nix.

The sandbox is created using bubblewrap, you can see its usage in ./tools/bwrap.nix.

Known limitations

Because of This issue, the environment inside bubblewrap won't be able to execute files with SUID bit set.

For example, that means that sudo is not possible, at least until this PR lands.