Manix

A fast CLI documentation searcher for Nix.

Supported sources

• Nixpkgs Documentation
• Nixpkgs Comments
• Nixpkgs Tree (pkgs, pkgs.lib)
• NixOS Options
• Nix-Darwin Options
• Home-Manager Options

Usage

manix --help
manix mergeattr
manix --strict mergeattr
manix --update-cache mergeattr

rnix-lsp

If you want to use it in your editor, check ElKowar's rnix-lsp fork, which uses it to provide documentation on hover and autocompletion.

fzf

You can use manix with fzf via this command:

manix "" | sed -n 's/^# \(.*\) \?.*/\1/p' | fzf --preview="manix '{}'" | xargs manix

Or, alternatively, without the final output if preview is enough:

manix "" | sed -n 's/^# \(.*\) \?.*/\1/p' | fzf --preview="manix '{}'"

Alternatively, you can use the following script by adding it to your Home Manager configuration:

(pkgs.callPackage PATH/TO/SCRIPT/SCRIPT.nix {})

This script caches all options for 10 days (you can adjust this value inside the script) or forces a refresh using the -r flag. Compared to the previous manix command, it trades a little disk space for significant time savings during searches.

Its dependencies are manix, ripgrep, and fzf.

{ writeShellApplication, manix, ripgrep, fzf, ... }:

let
  cacheTime = "10";
in

writeShellApplication {
  name = "custom-manix";
  runtimeInputs = [
    manix
    ripgrep
    fzf
  ];
  text = ''
CACHE_DIR="''${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}"
CACHE_FILE="$CACHE_DIR/custom-manix-options.txt"
mkdir -p "$CACHE_DIR"

REGENERATE=0

# Check if the -r flag was passed
if [ "''${1:-}" = "-r" ]; then
  REGENERATE=1
fi

# Regenerate cache if it doesn't exist or is older than cacheTime days
if [ ! -f "$CACHE_FILE" ] || [ "$(find "$CACHE_FILE" -mtime +${cacheTime} -print)" ]; then
  REGENERATE=1
fi

if [ $REGENERATE -eq 1 ]; then
  echo "(Re)building custom-manix cache..."
  mkdir -p "$(dirname "$CACHE_FILE")"
  manix "" \
    | rg '^(?:\x1b\[[0-9;]*m)*# ' \
    | sed 's/\x1b\[[0-9;]*m//g; s/^# //' \
    | rg -v '^(<|.*https?://)' \
    > "$CACHE_FILE"
fi

# Read from cache and pipe into fzf
cat "$CACHE_FILE" \
  | fzf --preview "manix {}" \
  | xargs manix
  '';
}

Installation

Update

Manix is now available in nixpkgs. If you use the unstable channel installing is as easy as adding manix to your environment.systemPackages or home.packages.

Github Releases

Since it can take some time to compile Manix, you can download statically-built executables from Github Releases.

wget https://github.com/nix-community/manix/releases/latest/download/manix
chmod +x manix
mv manix ~/bin/ # or some other location in your $PATH

nix-env

# If you have the unstable channel on your system
nix-env -f '<unstable>' -iA manix
# OR
nix-env -i -f https://github.com/nix-community/manix/archive/master.tar.gz
# OR
nix profile install github:nix-community/manix/latest

Nix with flakes enabled

nix run 'github:nix-community/manix' mapAttrs

Kudos

The original manix. mlvzk has been inactive for over a year, we thank him for his hard work. The inspiration for this project came from nix-doc