nix-download

nix-download

is a standalone tool for fetching Nix store paths and their dependencies from binary caches. It's designed to be easily deployable and allows for quick fetching of one-off binaries from Nix on any Linux system.

Features

• Fully standalone: can be statically linked with CA certificates baked in
• Easy deployment: single binary with no external dependencies
• Quick fetching: efficiently downloads Nix store paths and their dependencies
• Supports multiple substituters (binary caches)
• Verifies narinfo signatures

Usage

Basic usage:

nix-download /nix/store/39z5zpb72qrnxl832nwphcd4ihfhix3j-hello-2.12.1

This will download the specified store path and all its dependencies.

Options

• -store string: Nix store root directory (default "/nix/store")
• -substituter value: URL of a binary cache (can be specified multiple times)
• -public-key value: Public key in the format name:base64pubkey (can be specified multiple times)

By default cache.nixos.org is used and its binary-cache-key are used.

Example with options:

nix-download -store /custom/nix/store -substituter https://cache.nixos.org -public-key cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY= /nix/store/39z5zpb72qrnxl832nwphcd4ihfhix3j-hello-2.12.1

Building

To build a fully standalone binary with CA certificates baked in:

CGO_ENABLED=0 go build

Use Cases

• Quickly fetch Nix packages on systems without Nix installed
• Integrate Nix package fetching into CI/CD pipelines
• Download specific versions of tools or libraries in containerized environments

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.