Automatic environment activation with direnv#

Instead of manually activating the environment for each project, you can reload a declarative shell every time you enter the project’s directory or change the shell.nix inside it.

  1. Make nix-direnv available

  2. Hook it into your shell

For example, write a shell.nix with the following contents:

 1let
 2  nixpkgs = fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tarball/nixos-23.11";
 3  pkgs = import nixpkgs { config = {}; overlays = []; };
 4in
 5
 6pkgs.mkShellNoCC {
 7  packages = with pkgs; [
 8    hello
 9  ];
10}

From the top-level directory of your project run:

$ echo "use nix" > .envrc && direnv allow

The next time you launch your terminal and enter the top-level directory of your project, direnv will automatically launch the shell defined in shell.nix

$ cd myproject
$ which hello
/nix/store/1gxz5nfzfnhyxjdyzi04r86sh61y4i00-hello-2.12.1/bin/hello

direnv will also check for changes to the shell.nix file.

Make the following addition:

 let
   nixpkgs = fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tarball/nixos-23.11";
   pkgs = import nixpkgs { config = {}; overlays = []; };
 in

 pkgs.mkShellNoCC {
   packages = with pkgs; [
     hello
   ];
+
+  shellHook = ''
+    hello
+  '';
 }

The running environment should reload itself after the first interaction (run any command or press Enter).

Hello, world!