Zero to Nix

Zero to Nix is an unofficial and opinionated guide to getting started with Nix from Determinate Systems.

Setup

Make sure that you have Nix and direnv installed, then:

# Activate Nix development environment
direnv allow

# Recommended
alias npm=pnpm

Developing the site

Run locally

To run the site in development mode (with live reload when you make changes):

dev

To run the site in preview mode (with a static web server and no live reload):

preview

# Alternatively
nix run

Then open your browser to http://localhost:3000.

Run checks locally

The site has some CI checks that run in GitHub Actions, like link checking. To run the whole CI suite locally:

ci

Build locally

To ensure that the site can build properly in response to changes:

build

As an alternative, you can run the whole CI suite, which also builds the site.

Format code

To ensure that everything is properly formatted:

format

Publishing

The Zero to Nix site is automatically published on Vercel, which also provides deploy previews for pull requests.

Technologies

Zero to Nix's "stack" 🥞:

îles for content management and site generation
Vue for templating
MDX for content
Tailwind for CSS

MDX components

The site uses a number of custom MDX components to spice up the usual Markdown content.

Component	What it does
`Admonition`	An admonition block of type `danger`, `info`, `success`, or `warning`. Adding an `id` makes it a stateful callout dropdown.
`Concept`	Add a hoverable tool tip for a concept
`Language`	Displays which (programming) language the user has selected
`Languages`	Provides a (programming) language selector
`NixStorePath`	Provides a colorful visualization of Nix store path components
`Shell`	Provides language- and system-specific shell commands
`SpecificLanguage`	Displays the enclosed content only if the user has selected a specific language
`System`	Displays the currently selected system (Linux vs. macOS)
`Systems`	Provides a system selector (Linux vs. macOS)

Note: any time you use one of these components in an MDX file, you need to add a client:load directive to it. This is one of îles' so-called hydration directives. There are other directives available, but client:load is the one that we need to use, as it ensures that the component is loaded as soon as the user comes to the page.

Directory structure

Directory	What it contains
`src/assets`	Assets to be processed (only CSS for now)
`src/components`	Vue components used throughout the site
`src/layouts`	Vue layouts for specific page types
`src/logic`	TypeScript helper stuff for state and content management
`src/pages`	The content of the site (all MDX) plus some Vue templates for specific pages
`public`	Assets that won't be processed (favicon, etc.)

Page metadata

For quick start pages:

title
summary (an array of things that the user will accomplish in the guide)
order (ascending)

For concept pages:

title
snippet (a brief explanation of the concept that appears in pop-ups)
related (an array of IDs representing concept pages, like flakes or nix-store)
externalSources (an array of links to external sources, such as official docs)

Site logic

There are a few other important files you should be aware of when working on the site:

src/app.ts defines global page metadata
src/site.ts defines site-level values, like the title, description, navbar links, and more.
src/logic/content.ts provides the content management logic for the site (type-safe page frontmatter, functions to fetch and sort documents, and more)
src/logic/state.ts defines all stateful logic using the nanostores library
src/logic/theme.ts provides logic for the light/dark theme switcher

Suggested VS Code settings

If you happen to use VS Code as your editor, we recommend adding these extensions:

We also recommend adding these settings to your local .vscode/settings.json:

{
  "[mdx]": {
    // By default, this extension overwrites our one-sentence-per-line policy
    "editor.formatOnSave": false,
    // This is a nice helper for longer sentences
    "editor.wordWrapColumn": 100,
    "editor.wordWrap": "wordWrapColumn"
  },
  // Format everything using the Prettier config
  "editor.defaultFormatter": "esbenp.prettier-vscode",
  // Keep junk out of your search results
  "search.exclude": {
    "**/.direnv": true,
    "**/.git": true,
    "**/node_modules": true,
    "dist": true,
    "pnpm-lock.yaml": true,
    "*.d.ts": true,
    "tmp": true
  }
}

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