nix-plugin-pijul

This Nix plugin adds Pijul support to Nix in the form of a fetcher. This means that builtins.fetchTree, builtins.getFlake and the nix3 CLI tools now support Pijul repositories.

The following new URL schemes are supported:

• pijul+https
• pijul+http
• pijul+ssh
• pijul+file

Right now, the first three support specifying channel and state for pure fetching, pijul+file right now only fetches from the worktree and doesn't support these yet.

NB: The fetcher from this plugin does not automatically get used when running nix commands (e.g. nix build) in a Pijul repository, since this is hardcoded for Git and Mercurial in Nix. For this, I have a patch that adds the relevant code for Pijul, it's available as nix-pijul in my nix-extras flake. It replaces the normal Nix installation and can be used in addition to this plugin.

Installing

The package is available as part of my nix-extras flake:

% nix build sourcehut:~dblsaiko/nix-extras#nix-plugin-pijul

Add the built pijul.so module to plugin-files in nix.conf. Make sure it is built for the Nix version you are using it with.

The plugin executes pijul to actually fetch repositories, make sure that is available in the PATH.

NixOS (with the nix-extras overlay):

{pkgs, config, ...}: {
  environment.systemPackages = [pkgs.pijul];
  nix.settings.plugin-files = "${pkgs.nix-plugin-pijul.override { nix = config.nix.package; }}/lib/nix/plugins/pijul.so";
  
  # Optional: Use the patched Nix to automatically use Pijul fetcher in local
  # repositories
  nix.package = pkgs.nix-pijul;
}

Examples

• nix build pijul+https://nest.pijul.com/pijul/pijul
• nix build pijul+https://nest.pijul.com/pijul/pijul?channel=main&state=PNJL5TPZLQ3VXAASTLUX7462RCRPO7TV3GKOTTHDZABDQCBMXPRQC

• {
    inputs = {
      nix-plugin-pijul.url = "pijul+https://nest.pijul.com/dblsaiko/nix-plugin-pijul";
    };
  
    outputs = { self, nix-plugin-pijul }: {
      # ...
    };
  }
  

Acknowledgements

Code based on the pijul fetcher PR by Nikodem Rabuliński.