from Hacker News

Hello HN!

I had to work with a codebase that was full of magic environment variables and tons of bash scripts, which was and still is a nightmare.

I decided to try and make a solution using NIX, which ended being far more easy to work with and I think that brings a lot of value.

This is: https://github.com/Rucadi/nixsh

Some examples can be found on the readme but a more advanced example can be seen here: https://github.com/Rucadi/nixsh/blob/master/examples/nixsh/c...

Here's a glimpse of what the solution offers:

- Precise control over environment variables, ensuring only the necessary ones are accessible when executing any script.

- Ability to set default values for environment variables

- Ability to dynamically manipulate environment variables directly from NIX expressions.

- Using nix to eliminate the need for manual installation of dependencies before script execution.

- Integration of disparate components like bash scripts and programs in C++, Rust, or Python, facilitating cohesive scripting.

- Leveraging NIX as a preprocessor for any file, for example, you can generate code using nix, and compile it before the execution runs automatically.

- Compile-Time checking of existence of files and envars

- Full interoperability, since you end up executing bash/python in the end, with the benefit that nixsh will already have cleaned your environment :)

The current implementation involves parsing NIX code using tools like awk and sed to strategically inject components where needed. While this proof of concept serves its purpose.

I think it's a cool program and I think that I will use from now on, I'm 100% open to contributions if you feel like it :)