Read Manual (How to write packages for Nix). Fork the repository on GitHub. Create a branch for your future fix. You can make branch from a commit of your local nixos-version. That will help you to avoid additional local compilations. Because you will receive packages from binary cache. For example: nixos-version returns 15.05.git.0998212 (Dingo). So you can do: $ git checkout 0998212 $ git checkout -b 'fix/pkg-name-update' Please avoid working directly on the master branch. Make commits of logical units. If you removed pkgs, made some major NixOS changes etc., write about them in nixos/doc/manual/release-notes/rl-unstable.xml. Check for unnecessary whitespace with git diff --check before committing. Format the commit in a following way: (pkg-name | nixos/<module>): (from -> to | init at version | refactor | etc) Additional information. Examples: nginx: init at 2.0.1 firefox: 54.0.1 -> 55.0 nixos/hydra: add bazBaz option nixos/nginx: refactor config generation Test your changes. If you work with nixpkgs: update pkg -> nix-env -i pkg-name -f <path to your local nixpkgs folder> add pkg -> Make sure it's in pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix nix-env -i pkg-name -f <path to your local nixpkgs folder> If you don't want to install pkg in you profile. nix-build -A pkg-attribute-name <path to your local nixpkgs folder>/default.nix and check results in the folder result. It will appear in the same directory where you did nix-build. If you did nix-env -i pkg-name you can do nix-env -e pkg-name to uninstall it from your system. NixOS and its modules: You can add new module to your NixOS configuration file (usually it's /etc/nixos/configuration.nix). And do sudo nixos-rebuild test -I nixpkgs=<path to your local nixpkgs folder> --fast. If you have commits pkg-name: oh, forgot to insert whitespace: squash commits in this case. Use git rebase -i. Rebase you branch against current master.

Push your changes to your fork of nixpkgs. Create pull request: Write the title in format (pkg-name | nixos/<module>): improvement. If you update the pkg, write versions from -> to. Write in comment if you have tested your patch. Do not rely much on TravisCI. If you make an improvement, write about your motivation. Notify maintainers of the package. For example add to the message: cc @jagajaga @domenkozar.

The pull request template helps determine what steps have been made for a contribution so far, and will help guide maintainers on the status of a change. The motivation section of the PR should include any extra details the title does not address and link any existing issues related to the pull request. When a PR is created, it will be pre-populated with some checkboxes detailed below:

When sandbox builds are enabled, Nix will setup an isolated environment for each build process. It is used to remove further hidden dependencies set by the build environment to improve reproducibility. This includes access to the network during the build outside of fetch* functions and files outside the Nix store. Depending on the operating system access to other resources are blocked as well (ex. inter process communication is isolated on Linux); see sandbox in Nix manual for details. Sandboxing is not enabled by default in Nix due to a small performance hit on each build. In pull requests for nixpkgs people are asked to test builds with sandboxing enabled (see Tested using sandboxing in the pull request template) because inhttps://nixos.org/hydra/ sandboxing is also used. Depending if you use NixOS or other platforms you can use one of the following methods to enable sandboxing before building the package: Globally enable sandboxing on NixOS: add the following to configuration.nix nix.useSandbox = true; Globally enable sandboxing on non-NixOS platforms: add the following to: /etc/nix/nix.conf sandbox = true

Many Nix packages are designed to run on multiple platforms. As such, it's important to let the maintainer know which platforms your changes have been tested on. It's not always practical to test a change on all platforms, and is not required for a pull request to be merged. Only check the systems you tested the build on in this section.

Packages with automated tests are much more likely to be merged in a timely fashion because it doesn't require as much manual testing by the maintainer to verify the functionality of the package. If there are existing tests for the package, they should be run to verify your changes do not break the tests. Tests only apply to packages with NixOS modules defined and can only be run on Linux. For more details on writing and running tests, see the section in the NixOS manual.

If you are updating a package's version, you can use nix-review to make sure all packages that depend on the updated package still compile correctly. The nix-review utility can look for and build all dependencies either based on uncommited changes with the wip option or specifying a github pull request number. review changes from pull request number 12345: nix-shell -p nix-review --run "nix-review pr 12345" review uncommitted changes: nix-shell -p nix-review --run "nix-review wip"

It's important to test any executables generated by a build when you change or create a package in nixpkgs. This can be done by looking in ./result/bin and running any files in there, or at a minimum, the main executable for the package. For example, if you make a change to texlive, you probably would only check the binaries associated with the change you made rather than testing all of them.

The last checkbox is fits CONTRIBUTING.md. The contributing document has detailed information on standards the Nix community has for commit messages, reviews, licensing of contributions you make to the project, etc... Everyone should read and understand the standards the community has for contributing before submitting a pull request.

Make the appropriate changes in you branch. Don't create additional commits, do git rebase -i git push --force to your branch.

Commits must be sufficiently tested before being merged, both for the master and staging branches. Hydra builds for master and staging should not be used as testing platform, it's a build farm for changes that have been already tested. When changing the bootloader installation process, extra care must be taken. Grub installations cannot be rolled back, hence changes may break people's installations forever. For any non-trivial change to the bootloader please file a PR asking for review, especially from @edolstra.

The master branch is the main development branch. It should only see non-breaking commits that do not cause mass rebuilds.

The staging branch is a development branch where mass-rebuilds go. It should only see non-breaking mass-rebuild commits. That means it is not to be used for testing, and changes must have been well tested already. If the branch is already in a broken state, please refrain from adding extra new breakages.

The staging-next branch is for stabilizing mass-rebuilds submitted to the staging branch prior to merging them into master. Mass-rebuilds should go via the staging branch. It should only see non-breaking commits that are fixing issues blocking it from being merged into the master branch. If the branch is already in a broken state, please refrain from adding extra new breakages. Stabilize it for a few days and then merge into master.

If you're cherry-picking a commit to a stable release branch, always use git cherry-pick -xe and ensure the message contains a clear description about why this needs to be included in the stable branch. An example of a cherry-picked commit would look like this: nixos: Refactor the world. The original commit message describing the reason why the world was torn apart. (cherry picked from commit abcdef) Reason: I just had a gut feeling that this would also be wanted by people from the stone age.