Changes between Nix and Determinate Nix

This section lists the differences between upstream Nix 2.33 and Determinate Nix 3.15.1.

• In Determinate Nix, flakes are stable. You no longer need to enable the flakes experimental feature.

• In Determinate Nix, the new Nix CLI (i.e. the nix command) is stable. You no longer need to enable the nix-command experimental feature.

• Determinate Nix has a setting json-log-path to send a copy of all Nix log messages (in JSON format) to a file or Unix domain socket.

• Determinate Nix has made nix profile install an alias to nix profile add, a more symmetrical antonym of nix profile remove.

• nix-channel and channel: url syntax (like channel:nixos-24.11) is deprecated, see: https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/nix-src/issues/34

• Using indirect flake references and implicit inputs is deprecated, see: https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/nix-src/issues/37

• Warnings around "dirty trees" are updated to reduce "dirty" jargon, and now refers to "uncommitted changes".

• nix upgrade-nix is now inert, and suggests using determinate-nixd upgrade. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#55

• Determinate Nix has Lazy Trees, avoiding expensive copying of flake inputs to the Nix store. (DeterminateSystems/nix-src#27, DeterminateSystems/nix-src#56)

• Documentation on how to replicate nix-store --query --deriver with the new nix cli. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#82

• In nix profile, the symbols ε and ∅ have been replaced with descriptive English words. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#81

• When remote building with --keep-failed, Determinate Nix shows "you can rerun" message if the derivation's platform is supported on this machine. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#87

• Improved error message when sandbox-paths specifies a missing file. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#88

• nix store delete now explains why deletion fails. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#130

• Tab completing arguments to Nix avoids network access. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#161

• Importing Nixpkgs and other tarballs to the cache is 2-4x faster. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#149

• Adding paths to the store is significantly faster. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#162

• Determinate Nix allows flake inputs to be fetched at build time. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#49

• The default nix flake init template is much more useful. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#180

• Multithreaded evaluation support. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#125

• Determinate Nix only tries to substitute inputs if fetching from its original location fails.DeterminateSystems/nix-src#202

• A new command nix nario that replaces nix-store --export|--export. It also has a new file format (--format 2) that supports store path attributes such as signatures, and that can be imported more efficiently. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#215

• Determinate Nix prints the Nix version when using -vv or higher verbosity. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#237

• During evaluation, you can read or import from the result of builtins.fetchClosure. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#241

• Flakerefs in error messages and lockfile diffs are abbreviated for readability. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#243, DeterminateSystems/nix-src#264

• The Git fetcher doesn't compute revCount or lastModified if they're already specified DeterminateSystems./nix-src#269

• The Git fetcher avoids doing a shallow Git fetch if it previously did a non-shallow fetch of the same repository. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#270

• Determinate Nix has a builtin copy of the flake registry, making it more resilient to network outages. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#271

• nix build and nix profile report failing or succeeding installables. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#281

• nix flake check shows which outputs failed or succeeded. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#285

• Determinate Nix has a nix ps command to show active builds. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#282

• Determinate Nix has improved backward compatibility with lock files created by Nix < 2.20. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#278

• Determinate Nix has a builtin function builtins.filterAttrs. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#291

• builtins.fetchTree implicitly sets __final = true when a narHash is supplied. This allows the tree to be substituted. DeterminateSystems/nix-src#297

• Bring back the free alpha by @grahamc in DeterminateSystems/nix-src#305

• Replace substitutable hashes with unlilkey to substitute hashes by @grahamc in DeterminateSystems/nix-src#306