Nix-tree: Interactively browse the dependency graph of your Nix derivations

utdemir · July 1, 2020, 10:41am

I noticed that I spent a lot of time digging into the transitive dependencies of a store path, usually to trim down the closure size. So, I ended up creating a small terminal application to make it a bit easier.

Easiest way to understand what it is is to watch this console recording:

In case anyone else finds it useful: GitHub - utdemir/nix-tree: Interactively browse dependency graphs of Nix derivations.

I’m open to suggestions, bug reports or contributions.

Edit: This project has been renamed to “nix-tree”. (It used to be “nixdu”)

wmertens · July 1, 2020, 4:24pm

Sweet! Any idea how to convince home-manager to install it?

doronbehar · July 1, 2020, 7:58pm

Awesome! I’ve always wanted to have such a tool. Reminds me of my crufty too long command that I always used that did something similar:

du -csh /nix/store/* | sort -rh | fzf --preview-window=right --preview='printf "\n%s\n" "@@@ $(du -sh {2}) @@@"; printf "\n%s\n" "@@@ referrers @@@"; nix-store -q --referrers {2}; printf "\n%s\n" "@@@ references @@@"; nix-store -q --references {2}' | awk '{print $2}'

Thank you so much for creating this. I’d love to see this in Nixpkgs or in the NUR. Also, I give you for making nixdu it self a 4 references derivation

utdemir · July 1, 2020, 9:28pm

I just added an overlay, so it should now can be with home-manager like:

nixpkgs.overlays = [
  (let url = https://github.com/utdemir/nixdu/archive/master.tar.gz;
    in import "${builtins.fetchTarball url}/overlay.nix" {})
];

home.packages = [ pkgs.nixdu ];

(I also added this example to README).

I haven’t tried this, so please let me know if this doesn’t work.

ryantm · July 1, 2020, 10:28pm

Here’s how I did it:

niv add utdemir/nixdu

then: add nixdu · ryantm/dotfiles@0ca66bb · GitHub

My dotfiles use a similar setup to home-manager template

lheckemann · July 2, 2020, 7:32am

Related tool with a very similar name: GitHub - symphorien/nix-du: Visualise which gc-roots to delete to free some space in your nix store

utdemir · July 2, 2020, 7:52am

~~Oh, that is my mistake, sorry. I should’ve checked before. I will mention that in the README.~~

Thinking about it, I decided to rename this project to nix-tree. Thank you for letting me know @lheckemann.

crantok · February 13, 2024, 10:36am

This is my third day using nix and this page was the first hit when I did a web search for nix view dependency tree.

Thank you for making and sharing this. I felt relief as soon as soon as I ran nix-tree.

Jesse · August 2, 2024, 2:59pm

This tool is really great, I just got it from nix’s matrix Chinese community.