Hi. I’m using nix-vscode-extensions and for the sake of god I can’t figure out how to install unfree extensions like ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh.
In my flake.nix (see below, removed unnecessary stuff) I set allowUnfree = true; for pkgs. My home-manager also has useGlobalPkgs = true; set. I can install unfree packages without a problem. But for vscode extensions this doesn’t seem to work.
The readme of nix-vscode-extensions also mentions to just set allowUnfree for pkgs.
I have no idea what is going on here. Can someone please help me? I tried multple times to fix this but never managed to make any progress and falled back to using NIXPKGS_ALLOW_UNFREE=1 which works but is not really a solution I guess.
error: Package ‘vscode-extension-ms-vscode-remote-remote-ssh-0.121.2025050915’ in /nix/store/k6hfjkc337ik8l6snfd5q4b7b0flw3py-ninkaf94v6231yv0pyx401zfsw8pkxxx-source/pkgs/applications/editors/vscode/extensions/ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh/default.nix:101 has an unfree license (‘unfree’), refusing to evaluate.
a) To temporarily allow unfree packages, you can use an environment variable
for a single invocation of the nix tools.
$ export NIXPKGS_ALLOW_UNFREE=1
Note: When using `nix shell`, `nix build`, `nix develop`, etc with a flake,
then pass `--impure` in order to allow use of environment variables.
b) For `nixos-rebuild` you can set
{ nixpkgs.config.allowUnfree = true; }
in configuration.nix to override this.
Alternatively you can configure a predicate to allow specific packages:
{ nixpkgs.config.allowUnfreePredicate = pkg: builtins.elem (lib.getName pkg) [
"vscode-extension-ms-vscode-remote-remote-ssh"
];
}
c) For `nix-env`, `nix-build`, `nix-shell` or any other Nix command you can add
{ allowUnfree = true; }
to ~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix.
{
inputs = {
nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs?ref=nixos-25.05";
nixpkgs-unstable.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs?ref=nixos-unstable";
home-manager = {
url = "github:nix-community/home-manager?ref=release-25.05";
inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
};
nix-vscode-extensions.url = "github:nix-community/nix-vscode-extensions";
};
outputs = inputs@{
self,
nixpkgs,
nixpkgs-unstable,
...
}:
let
system = "x86_64-linux";
pkgs = import nixpkgs {
inherit system;
config.allowUnfree = true;
};
pkgs-unstable = import nixpkgs-unstable {
inherit system;
config.allowUnfree = true;
};
commonArgs = { inherit self inputs pkgs-unstable; };
in
{
nixosConfigurations = {
nixos-playground = inputs.nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
specialArgs = commonArgs;
modules = [ ./hosts/nixos-playground ];
};
};
};
}
{
inputs,
pkgs,
...
}: let
marketplace = inputs.nix-vscode-extensions.extensions.${pkgs.system}.vscode-marketplace;
in {
_module.args.marketplace = marketplace;
home-manager.users.mentos.programs.vscode = {
enable = true;
mutableExtensionsDir = false;
# Extensions
extensions = with marketplace; [
ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh
];
};
}