nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/development/writing-modules.chapter.md

Writing NixOS Modules

NixOS has a modular system for declarative configuration. This system combines multiple modules to produce the full system configuration. One of the modules that constitute the configuration is /etc/nixos/configuration.nix. Most of the others live in the nixos/modules subdirectory of the Nixpkgs tree.

Each NixOS module is a file that handles one logical aspect of the configuration, such as a specific kind of hardware, a service, or network settings. A module configuration does not have to handle everything from scratch; it can use the functionality provided by other modules for its implementation. Thus a module can declare options that can be used by other modules, and conversely can define options provided by other modules in its own implementation. For example, the module pam.nix declares the option security.pam.services that allows other modules (e.g. sshd.nix) to define PAM services; and it defines the option environment.etc (declared by etc.nix) to cause files to be created in /etc/pam.d.

In , we saw the following structure of NixOS modules:

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

{ # option definitions
}

This is actually an abbreviated form of module that only defines options, but does not declare any. The structure of full NixOS modules is shown in Example: Structure of NixOS Modules.

::: {#ex-module-syntax .example}

Structure of NixOS Modules

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

{
  imports =
    [ # paths of other modules
    ];

  options = {
    # option declarations
  };

  config = {
    # option definitions
  };
}

:::

The meaning of each part is as follows.

• The first line makes the current Nix expression a function. The variable pkgs contains Nixpkgs (by default, it takes the nixpkgs entry of NIX_PATH, see the Nix manual for further details), while config contains the full system configuration. This line can be omitted if there is no reference to pkgs and config inside the module.

• This imports list enumerates the paths to other NixOS modules that should be included in the evaluation of the system configuration. A default set of modules is defined in the file modules/module-list.nix. These don't need to be added in the import list.

• The attribute options is a nested set of option declarations (described below).

• The attribute config is a nested set of option definitions (also described below).

Example: NixOS Module for the "locate" Service shows a module that handles the regular update of the "locate" database, an index of all files in the file system. This module declares two options that can be defined by other modules (typically the user's configuration.nix): services.locate.enable (whether the database should be updated) and services.locate.interval (when the update should be done). It implements its functionality by defining two options declared by other modules: systemd.services (the set of all systemd services) and systemd.timers (the list of commands to be executed periodically by systemd).

Care must be taken when writing systemd services using Exec* directives. By default systemd performs substitution on %<char> specifiers in these directives, expands environment variables from $FOO and ${FOO}, splits arguments on whitespace, and splits commands on ;. All of these must be escaped to avoid unexpected substitution or splitting when interpolating into an Exec* directive, e.g. when using an extraArgs option to pass additional arguments to the service. The functions utils.escapeSystemdExecArg and utils.escapeSystemdExecArgs are provided for this, see Example: Escaping in Exec directives for an example. When using these functions system environment substitution should not be disabled explicitly.

::: {#locate-example .example}

NixOS Module for the "locate" Service

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:

let
  inherit (lib) concatStringsSep mkIf mkOption optionalString types;
  cfg = config.services.locate;
in {
  options.services.locate = {
    enable = mkOption {
      type = types.bool;
      default = false;
      description = ''
        If enabled, NixOS will periodically update the database of
        files used by the locate command.
      '';
    };

    interval = mkOption {
      type = types.str;
      default = "02:15";
      example = "hourly";
      description = ''
        Update the locate database at this interval. Updates by
        default at 2:15 AM every day.

        The format is described in
        systemd.time(7).
      '';
    };

    # Other options omitted for documentation
  };

  config = {
    systemd.services.update-locatedb =
      { description = "Update Locate Database";
        path  = [ pkgs.su ];
        script =
          ''
            mkdir -m 0755 -p $(dirname ${toString cfg.output})
            exec updatedb \
              --localuser=${cfg.localuser} \
              ${optionalString (!cfg.includeStore) "--prunepaths='/nix/store'"} \
              --output=${toString cfg.output} ${concatStringsSep " " cfg.extraFlags}
          '';
      };

    systemd.timers.update-locatedb = mkIf cfg.enable
      { description = "Update timer for locate database";
        partOf      = [ "update-locatedb.service" ];
        wantedBy    = [ "timers.target" ];
        timerConfig.OnCalendar = cfg.interval;
      };
  };
}

:::

::: {#exec-escaping-example .example}

Escaping in Exec directives

{ config, pkgs, utils, ... }:

let
  cfg = config.services.echo;
  echoAll = pkgs.writeScript "echo-all" ''
    #! ${pkgs.runtimeShell}
    for s in "$@"; do
      printf '%s\n' "$s"
    done
  '';
  args = [ "a%Nything" "lang=\${LANG}" ";" "/bin/sh -c date" ];
in {
  systemd.services.echo =
    { description = "Echo to the journal";
      wantedBy = [ "multi-user.target" ];
      serviceConfig.Type = "oneshot";
      serviceConfig.ExecStart = ''
        ${echoAll} ${utils.escapeSystemdExecArgs args}
      '';
    };
}

:::

option-declarations.section.md
option-types.section.md
option-def.section.md
assertions.section.md
meta-attributes.section.md
importing-modules.section.md
replace-modules.section.md
freeform-modules.section.md
settings-options.section.md