This chapter describes how to extend and change Nixpkgs packages using overlays. Overlays are used to add layers in the fix-point used by Nixpkgs to compose the set of all packages. Nixpkgs can be configured with a list of overlays, which are applied in order. This means that the order of the overlays can be significant if multiple layers override the same package.

The list of overlays can be set either explicitly in a Nix expression, or through <nixpkgs-overlays> or user configuration files.

On a NixOS system the value of the nixpkgs.overlays option, if present, is passed to the system Nixpkgs directly as an argument. Note that this does not affect the overlays for non-NixOS operations (e.g. nix-env), which are looked up independently. The list of overlays can be passed explicitly when importing nixpkgs, for example import <nixpkgs> { overlays = [ overlay1 overlay2 ]; }. Further overlays can be added by calling the pkgs.extend or pkgs.appendOverlays, although it is often preferable to avoid these functions, because they recompute the Nixpkgs fixpoint, which is somewhat expensive to do.

The list of overlays is determined as follows. First, if an overlays argument to the nixpkgs function itself is given, then that is used and no path lookup will be performed. Otherwise, if the Nix path entry <nixpkgs-overlays> exists, we look for overlays at that path, as described below. See the section on NIX_PATH in the Nix manual for more details on how to set a value for <nixpkgs-overlays>. If one of ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays.nix and ~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/ exists, then we look for overlays at that path, as described below. It is an error if both exist. If we are looking for overlays at a path, then there are two cases: If the path is a file, then the file is imported as a Nix expression and used as the list of overlays. If the path is a directory, then we take the content of the directory, order it lexicographically, and attempt to interpret each as an overlay by: Importing the file, if it is a .nix file. Importing a top-level default.nix file, if it is a directory. Because overlays that are set in NixOS configuration do not affect non-NixOS operations such as nix-env, the overlays.nix option provides a convenient way to use the same overlays for a NixOS system configuration and user configuration: the same file can be used as overlays.nix and imported as the value of nixpkgs.overlays.

Overlays are Nix functions which accept two arguments, conventionally called self and super, and return a set of packages. For example, the following is a valid overlay. self: super: { boost = super.boost.override { python = self.python3; }; rr = super.callPackage ./pkgs/rr { stdenv = self.stdenv_32bit; }; } The first argument (self) corresponds to the final package set. You should use this set for the dependencies of all packages specified in your overlay. For example, all the dependencies of rr in the example above come from self, as well as the overridden dependencies used in the boost override. The second argument (super) corresponds to the result of the evaluation of the previous stages of Nixpkgs. It does not contain any of the packages added by the current overlay, nor any of the following overlays. This set should be used either to refer to packages you wish to override, or to access functions defined in Nixpkgs. For example, the original recipe of boost in the above example, comes from super, as well as the callPackage function. The value returned by this function should be a set similar to pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix, containing overridden and/or new packages. Overlays are similar to other methods for customizing Nixpkgs, in particular the packageOverrides attribute described in . Indeed, packageOverrides acts as an overlay with only the super argument. It is therefore appropriate for basic use, but overlays are more powerful and easier to distribute.