Nix IDE

Adds Nix language support for Visual Studio Code.

Installation

Available on both the Visual Studio Marketplace and the Open VSX Registry.

You can also open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux or Cmd+Shift+P on macOS) and enter ext install jnoortheen.nix-ide to install the extension, or download it from the latest release.

Features

Syntax Highlighting

Note

Thanks to https://github.com/wmertens/sublime-nix for the original grammar!

Nix code snippets inside markdown files also work.

Language Servers

Full editing support when using a language server. Generally, any Nix LSP implementation should work.

The following have been tested so far:

• nil
• nixd

{
  "nix.enableLanguageServer": true,

  "nix.serverPath": "nil",
  // or
  "nix.serverPath": "nixd"
}

Pass settings to the language server via the serverSettings option.

{
  "nix.serverSettings": {
    "nil": {
      "diagnostics": {
        "ignored": ["unused_binding", "unused_with"]
      },
      "formatting": {
        "command": ["nixpkgs-fmt"]
      }
    }
  }
}

{
    "nix.serverSettings": {
        "nixd": {
            "formatting": {
                "command": [ "nixpkgs-fmt" ]
            },
            "options": {
                // By default, this entriy will be read from `import <nixpkgs> { }`.
                // You can write arbitary Nix expressions here, to produce valid "options" declaration result.
                // Tip: for flake-based configuration, utilize `builtins.getFlake`
                "nixos": {
                    "expr": "(builtins.getFlake \"/absolute/path/to/flake\").nixosConfigurations.<name>.options"
                },
                "home-manager": {
                    "expr": "(builtins.getFlake \"/absolute/path/to/flake\").homeConfigurations.<name>.options"
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Formatting

Enable formatting support by setting nix.formatterPath to any command which can accept file contents on stdin and return formatted text on stdout.

{
  "nix.formatterPath": "nixpkgs-fmt"
}

{
  "nix.formatterPath": "nixfmt"
}

{
  "nix.formatterPath": ["treefmt", "--stdin", "{file}"]
}

{
  "nix.formatterPath": ["nix", "fmt", "--", "-"] // using flakes with `formatter = pkgs.alejandra;`
}

Error Reporting

Errors reported using nix-instantiate.

Snippets

Snippets are provided for conditional expressions, let expressions, with expressions, and recursive sets.

Todos

• Embedded language support for Bash.
• Path completion.

Contributing

• Document the purpose of functions and classes.
• Please mention new features in the README.md features section. Use screenshots when applicable.
• The Conventional Commits style should be used for commit messages as it is used to generate the changelog.

Development

There is direnv and nix-shell support so a dev environment can be created with the nix-shell command or a one-time direnv allow at the root of the repo.

Press F5 in VSCode to run an Extension Development Host instance with the extension installed.

TypeScript is used to develop the extension.

yarn install # install dependencies
yarn build   # build the extension

Releasing a new version

Complete .env with environment variables based on .env.template,

# this is needed to publish extensions to [openvsx](https://open-vsx.org/) from local machine.
yarn env-cmd

# this will generate changelog and will create a GitHub release. This will also trigger jobs to publish the extension.
yarn release

# to manually publish the extension
yarn publish

Credits

Special thanks to:

• @wmertens for writing the grammar.
• The vscode-fish extension, which was modified to work for Nix in this extension.