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Source document: introduction/develop_nix.md
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Translation model: hunyuan-turbos-latest

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Developing DragonOS with Nix

The introduction of Nix eliminates the need for manually maintained bootstrap.sh in DragonOS’s development environment. Now, any Linux distribution can quickly build and run DragonOS by installing the Nix environment!

Installing Nix and Enabling Flake Support

Refer to https://nixos.org/download/ to install Nix: The Nix package manager. (Not NixOS!)

Refer to https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Flakes#Setup to enable flake support.

If you want to experience Nix’s declarative management without changing your distribution, try home-manager and configure it to enable flakes and direnv.
Otherwise, you can directly install flakes in a standalone Nix manner, or add --experimental-features 'nix-command flakes' before each command.

Domestic Mirror Acceleration (Recommended)

If you are in China and do not have a global proxy, the first dependency pull may be slow or even fail. This repository has built-in domestic mirror configurations in flake.nix, which will take effect automatically when using nix develop / nix run.

If it still doesn’t work, it is recommended to append the following content to your user-level configuration (it will not overwrite your existing configuration):

mkdir -p ~/.config/nix
cat >> ~/.config/nix/nix.conf <<'EOF'
# DragonOS Nix mirror (CN)
extra-substituters = https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/nix-channels/store https://mirrors.ustc.edu.cn/nix-channels/store
extra-trusted-public-keys = cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY=
EOF

Cloning the Repository

DragonOS now has repository mirrors on multiple hosting platforms:

https://github.com/DragonOS-Community/DragonOS.git
https://atomgit.com/DragonOS-Community/DragonOS.git
https://cnb.cool/DragonOS-Community/DragonOS.git

git clone https://atomgit.com/DragonOS-Community/DragonOS.git
cd DragonOS

Activating the Kernel Compilation Environment

nix develop

If you have configured direnv, the first time you enter the repository directory, you will be prompted to execute direnv allow, which is equivalent to automatically entering the nix develop environment.

Compiling the Kernel

Execute the compilation:

make kernel

By default, this will compile the kernel ELF to ./bin/kernel/kernel.elf

Building the Root Filesystem

nix run .#rootfs-x86_64

This will generate ./bin/qemu-system-x86_64.img

Starting the Kernel

nix run .#start-x86_64

Now you can see your terminal loading DragonOS.

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To exit the DragonOS (QEMU) environment, type ctrl + a, then x

More Nix Command Usage and Nix Script Maintenance

cd docs && nix run Build documentation and start an HTTP server.
If storage space is tight, nix store gc Clean up dangling historical build copies.
In the project root directory, nix flake show View available build targets.
More Nix-related user-space builds are detailed in the Userland section.