# Mach-nix, pip2nix, poetry2nix, or pynixify for Zulip provision

**URL:** https://discourse.nixos.org/t/mach-nix-pip2nix-poetry2nix-or-pynixify-for-zulip-provision/18836
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [April 25, 2022, 6:03am UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/mach-nix-pip2nix-poetry2nix-or-pynixify-for-zulip-provision/18836 "2022-04-25T06:03:10Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 9

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### Author: ![rht](https://discourse.nixos.org/user_avatar/discourse.nixos.org/rht/32/3731_2.png) [@rht](https://discourse.nixos.org/u/rht)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2022, 8:57am UTC](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/mach-nix-pip2nix-poetry2nix-or-pynixify-for-zulip-provision/18836/9 "2022-04-26T08:57:49Z")

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Thank you for helping me understand the tools better.

I found a [post comparing `mach-nix` and `poetry2nix`](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/mach-nix-create-python-environments-quick-and-easy/6858/37). Though this was in May 2020, and might be outdated.

For reference, the `pypi-deps-db` is ~74.9 MiB as of today, which is fine once downloaded.

> `poetry2nix` tries to be pure and builds everything from source, there’s an undocumented option to use `wheels` but I don’t know if it works anymore.

I just discovered that the `preferWheels` feature was recently documented ~7 days ago: [Document preferWheels parameter · nix-community/poetry2nix@c13ba70 · GitHub](https://github.com/nix-community/poetry2nix/commit/c13ba702088ca2d16395227b2c5cae07476599bd).

I need to re-mention that Nix-ifying the Python environment in Zulip is one of the steps toward moving the rest of the non-Python components to Nix. This means it will include nodejs, PostgreSQL, Redis, nginx, RabbitMQ, and so on as well (documentation can be found [here](https://github.com/zulip/zulip/blob/299995bd3a348d77de770dc27a8ec4f4b1d42a8e/docs/overview/architecture-overview.md)). Is it possible to embed `mach-nix.mkPython`/`poetry2nix.mkPoetryApplication` as a part of a larger build system?

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_[View the full topic](https://discourse.nixos.org/t/mach-nix-pip2nix-poetry2nix-or-pynixify-for-zulip-provision/18836)._