bluskript / nix-inspect

Interactive tui for inspecting nix configs

nix-inspect

A ranger-like TUI for inspecting your nixos config and other arbitrary nix expressions.

nix run github:bluskript/nix-inspect

demo.mp4

Motivation

A lot of the time my workflow using nixos would involve running a series of commands to find the final merged result of my config:

❯ : nix repl
nix-repl> :lf /etc/nixos
Added 18 variables.
nix-repl> nixosConfigurations.felys.config.home-manager.users.blusk.stylix.fonts.monospace.name
"Cozette"

nix-inspect aims to improve on this workflow by offering a interactive way to browse a config and offering quality of life features such as bookmarks and a path navigator mode to get where you need quickly.

Features

• 🪡 Path navigator to quickly type in or paste a path which live updates as you type (.)
  • Supports tab completion!
• 🔍Fuzzy search in the current directory (Ctrl-F or /)
• 🔖 Bookmarks to save important nix paths, automatically populated with your current system and user (s)
• ⌨️ Vim keybindings (hjkl, ctl+u, ctrl+d)
• (planned) 🕑 Recently visited paths tab

Usage

By default, nix-inspect will try to load your config where it is, by default this will be /etc/nixos if you are using flakes or the path in NIX_PATH if you are using legacy. If this behavior is not what you want, nix-inspect comes with some flags:

• --expr / -e - load an arbitrary expression. Example: nix-inspect -e { a = 1; }
• --path / -p - load a config at a specific path. Example: nix-inspect -p /persist/etc/nixos

Key Bindings

Key	Behavior
q	Exit
h / left arrow	Navigate up a level
j / down arrow	Select lower item
k / up arrow	Select upper item
l / right arrow	Enter selected item
f / "/"	Search
ctrl+d	Half-Page Down
ctrl+u	Half-Page Up
s	Save bookmark
.	Path Navigator mode
n	Next Search Occurence
N	Previous Search Occurence

Installation

This project has been added to nixpkgs, but there may have been changes not yet landed there. It is recommended to use nix-inspect as a flake like so:

{
  inputs = {
    nix-inspect.url = "github:bluskript/nix-inspect";
  };
}

and then reference it in your environment.systemPackages:

{inputs, ...}: {
  environment.systemPackages = [
    inputs.nix-inspect.packages.default
  ];
}