Emily
a0e48fec74
macOS 27 is going to drop Intel support, so we’re pre‐announcing the inevitable so that people can prepare. We already announced that we’re aligning our OS support policy with Apple’s starting in 25.11, so it’s very unlikely that we could justify making an exception to devote resources to `x86_64-darwin` support in 28.11 and beyond, after Apple stop releasing security updates for the platform. However, the end of support in Nixpkgs may come sooner than that. Apple have announced that [Rosetta 2 will be pared down] by macOS 28 to not support emulation of arbitrary applications. We use `aarch64-darwin` builder machines exclusively and rely on Rosetta 2 to build packages for `x86_64-darwin`. As we try to keep the builders on the latest OS versions, that would mean that we’d lose the ability to build for `x86_64-darwin` around the release of 27.11, unless we held back on updating the OS on the builders for a year. [Rosetta 2 will be pared down]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple-silicon/about-the-rosetta-translation-environment Additionally, `x86_64-darwin` is the slowest system to build due to our limited Mac builder resources and the emulation overhead. Dropping support will more than double our effective `aarch64-darwin` build capacity and benefit the whole project by reducing the bottleneck on world rebuilds during `staging-next` cycles. It’s hard to find good data on the relative market share, but the May 2025 [Steam Hardware Survey] shows over 80% of their macOS users already being on Apple Silicon. Therefore, I’d personally expect us to drop support by 26.11, given the trade‐off between the resources it will take to continue supporting `x86_64-darwin` and the number of users it is likely to benefit. (And I’m typing this on a Intel Mac myself…) [Steam Hardware Survey]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/
Nixpkgs is a collection of over 120,000 software packages that can be installed with the Nix package manager. It also implements NixOS, a purely-functional Linux distribution.
Manuals
- NixOS Manual - how to install, configure, and maintain a purely-functional Linux distribution
- Nixpkgs Manual - contributing to Nixpkgs and using programming-language-specific Nix expressions
- Nix Package Manager Manual - how to write Nix expressions (programs), and how to use Nix command line tools
Community
- Discourse Forum
- Matrix Chat
- Official wiki
- Community-maintained list of ways to get in touch (Discord, Telegram, IRC, etc.)
Other Project Repositories
The sources of all official Nix-related projects are in the NixOS organization on GitHub. Here are some of the main ones:
- Nix - the purely functional package manager
- NixOps - the tool to remotely deploy NixOS machines
- nixos-hardware - NixOS profiles to optimize settings for different hardware
- Nix RFCs - the formal process for making substantial changes to the community
- NixOS homepage - the NixOS.org website
- hydra - our continuous integration system
- NixOS Branding - NixOS branding
Continuous Integration and Distribution
Nixpkgs and NixOS are built and tested by our continuous integration system, Hydra.
- Continuous package builds for unstable/master
- Continuous package builds for the NixOS 25.05 release
- Tests for unstable/master
- Tests for the NixOS 25.05 release
Artifacts successfully built with Hydra are published to cache at https://cache.nixos.org/. When successful build and test criteria are met, the Nixpkgs expressions are distributed via Nix channels.
Contributing
Nixpkgs is among the most active projects on GitHub. While thousands of open issues and pull requests might seem like a lot at first, it helps to consider it in the context of the scope of the project. Nixpkgs describes how to build tens of thousands of pieces of software and implements a Linux distribution. The GitHub Insights page gives a sense of the project activity.
Community contributions are always welcome through GitHub Issues and Pull Requests.
For more information about contributing to the project, please visit the contributing page.
Donations
The infrastructure for NixOS and related projects is maintained by a nonprofit organization, the NixOS Foundation. To ensure the continuity and expansion of the NixOS infrastructure, we are looking for donations to our organization.
You can donate to the NixOS foundation through SEPA bank transfers or by using Open Collective:
License
Nixpkgs is licensed under the MIT License.
Note
MIT license does not apply to the packages built by Nixpkgs, merely to the files in this repository (the Nix expressions, build scripts, NixOS modules, etc.). It also might not apply to patches included in Nixpkgs, which may be derivative works of the packages to which they apply. The aforementioned artifacts are all covered by the licenses of the respective packages.