Nixir - Import-Resolving IR Plugin

Nixir, for the lack of a more imaginative name, is a Nix plugin with a fancy hybrid compilation architecture for optimized evaluation. We provide two complementary paths for Nix evaluator. It is either On-the-fly compilation where the plugin parses and compiles Nix code at runtime, or; ahead-of-time compilation where the nix-irc tool pre-compiles .nix files into .nixir files.

The plugin automatically chooses the fastest path based on file availability.

Supported Nix Constructs

• Literals: integers, strings, booleans, null, paths
• Attrsets: { name: value; }
• Recursive attrsets: rec { ... }
• Let bindings: let x: 1; in x
• Recursion let: let rec x: y; y: x; in x
• Conditionals: if cond then a else b
• Lambdas: (basic support, patterns coming in Phase 5)
• Applications: function calls
• Selections: attrset.attribute
• Assertions: assert condition; expr
• With expressions: with attrs; expr
• Operators:
  • Binary: +, -, *, /, ++, ==, !=, <, >, <=, >=, &&, ||, ->
  • Unary: -, !

Usage

Compiling Nix to IR

# Basic compilation
$ nix-irc input.nix output.nixir

# With import search paths
$ nix-irc -I ./lib -I /nix/store/... input.nix output.nixir

# Disable import resolution
$ nix-irc --no-imports input.nix output.nixir

Contributing

This is a research/experimental project. Contributions welcome!

Areas where help is needed:

• Expanding parser to handle more Nix syntax
• Performance optimization
• Test coverage
• Documentation improvements