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Playlist "NixCon 2023"

Compiling to Nix: A Quick Overview

Yvan Sraka

What are the languages that target Nix? Why might someone choose not to write an expression directly in Nix? How do these languages differ from one another?

This lightning talk will offer a brief overview of languages that can compile to Nix. For instance, [Dhall](https://dhall-lang.org/), [PureScript](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/purenix) and [Nickel](https://nickel-lang.org/) (even though it doesn't directly translate to Nix). What do the generated expressions look like? Can I use them to write a package definition or a NixOS configuration?

**EDIT:** I will not have the time to introduce an experimental toy project of mine: a Scheme dialect that compiles to Nix, featuring a _static_ type system inspired by the [contracts](https://github.com/yvan-sraka/contracts) library. But I will be more than happy to discuss it while HackDay!