nix-demos

Sometimes you want to show people the power of Nix.

MicroVMs

To run the MicroVM example from this repo, there are two approaches:

Directly, with no modifications

nix run github:nix-how/nix-demos?dir=templates/microvm-interactive#microvm

Clone the template and start modifying, then run

Create a directory to start working in, then:

1. nix flake init --template github:nix-how/nix-demos#microvm-interactive
2. optionally edit the flake.nix or configuration.nix to change how the microvm behaves
3. nix run .#microvm

runtimeReport

Based on Recovering Nix derivation attributes of runtime dependencies by Nicolas Mattia, you can generate a runtime dependency report, which includes recursive license information, if you run it as follows:

nix bundle --bundler github:nix-how/nix-demos#runtimeReport nixpkgs#hello

This will produce a symlink to the /nix/store by the name and version of the package, with the following output:

❯ nix bundle --bundler .#runtimeReport nixpkgs#hello
❯ cat hello-2.12.1-report
  ---------------------------------
  |        OFFICIAL REPORT        |
  |   requested by: the lawyers   |
  |    written by: yours truly    |
  |    TOP SECRET - TOP SECRET    |
  ---------------------------------

runtime dependencies of hello-2.12.1:
 - libidn2-2.3.2 (lgpl3Plus, gpl2Plus, gpl3Plus) maintained by Franz Pletz
 - hello-2.12.1 (gpl3Plus) maintained by Eelco Dolstra
 - glibc-2.35-163 (lgpl2Plus) maintained by Eelco Dolstra, Maximilian Bosch
 - libunistring-1.0 (lgpl3Plus) maintained by

This is similar to an SBOM, but in no particular format such as SPDX or CycloneDX. This could be expanded upon.