Develop with Nix

The NativeLink flake provisions a complete dev shell — the exact Rust toolchain, the exact Bazel version, protoc, mold, every binary the build invokes. Use this if you want absolute reproducibility, or if you're working on LRE (which requires Nix).

Install Nix

The next-gen Nix installer is the easiest path:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf \
  -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- install

It enables flakes by default.

Enter the dev shell

git clone https://github.com/TraceMachina/nativelink
cd nativelink
nix develop

First run downloads the toolchain (a few minutes). Subsequent nix develop invocations are instant — everything is content- addressed in /nix/store.

Inside the shell you have:

• Cargo + the pinned Rust toolchain.
• Bazel + Bazelisk.
• protoc, mold, clang, and friends.
• Test runners and linters (cargo-nextest, cargo-deny, cargo-shear).
• The nativelink binary itself, prebuilt.

Running things inside the shell

Anything from the Bazel or Cargo workflow works inside nix develop. The shell just guarantees the tooling is the version we tested.

LRE-specific helpers

The flake exposes a few LRE-flavoured entry points:

# Start an LRE-configured NativeLink server.
nix run .#nativelink-lre

# Open a shell with the LRE toolchain pinned.
nix develop .#lre

See Explanations → LRE for what these are doing.

When Nix isn't worth it

If you're making a small, localised change — typo fix, doc tweak, a unit test — the Cargo workflow is faster to get into. Nix shines for work touching the build graph, the LRE flow, or anything that needs exact toolchain reproducibility.

FAQ