NixCon 2020: Online Edition

Eelco Dolstra

Eelco Dolstra is a Senior Software Engineer at Tweag I/O. He obtained
a PhD in Computer Science from Utrecht University in 2006 and was a
postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University and Delft University of
Technology. From 2012 to 2018 he was a Software Engineer at LogicBlox
(acquired by Infor in 2016). As part of his PhD research project at
Utrecht University, he developed Nix, the purely functional package
manager. Together with Armijn Hemel, he started the NixOS Linux
distribution in 2006. He joined Tweag I/O in 2018. He also serves as
President of the NixOS Foundation.


Session

10-16
11:15
25min
Nix modules: Improving Nix's discoverability and usability
Eelco Dolstra

Nix's configuration language is quite powerful, but suffers from a
lack of discoverability, usability and consistency. In this talk, I'll
describe an experimental Nix module system that provides a consistent,
discoverable mechanism to write configurations such as packages and
NixOS systems, and show how this enables a better user experience for
both new and advanced users.

Main Stream