nixos-generators - one config, multiple formats

The nixos-generators project allows to take the same NixOS configuration, and generate outputs for different target formats.

Just put your stuff into the configuration.nix and then call one of the image builders.

for example:

nixos-generate -f iso

or

nixos-generate -f iso -c /etc/nixos/configuration.nix

it echoes the path to a iso image, which you then can flash onto an usb-stick or mount & boot in a virtual machine.

Installation

nixos-generators can be installed from source into the user profile like this:

nix-env -f https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators/archive/master.tar.gz -i

Supported formats

format	description
azure	Microsoft azure image (Generation 1 / VHD)
do	Digital Ocean image
gce	Google Compute image
hyperv	Hyper-V Image (Generation 2 / VHDX)
install-iso	Installer ISO
install-iso-hyperv	Installer ISO with enabled hyper-v support
iso	ISO
kexec	kexec tarball (extract to / and run /kexec_nixos)
kexec-bundle	same as before, but it's just an executable
lxc	create a tarball which is importable as an lxc container, use together with lxc-metadata
lxc-metadata	the necessary metadata for the lxc image to start, usage: lxc image import $(nixos-generate -f lxc-metadata) $(nixos-generate -f lxc)
openstack	qcow2 image for openstack
cloudstack	qcow2 image for cloudstack
qcow	qcow2 image
raw	raw image with bios/mbr
raw-efi	raw image with efi support
virtualbox	virtualbox VM
vm	only used as a qemu-kvm runner
vm-nogui	same as before, but without a GUI
sd-aarch64-installer	create an installer sd card for aarch64. For cross compiling use --system aarch64-linux and read the cross-compile section.
sd-aarch64	Like sd-aarch64-installer, but does not use default installer image config.

Usage

Run nixos-generate --help for detailed usage information.

select a specific nixpkgs channel

adds ability to select a specific channel version.

example:

nix-shell --command './nixos-generate -f iso -I nixpkgs=channel:nixos-19.09'

Using a particular nixpkgs

To use features found in a different nixpkgs (for instance the Digital Ocean image was recently merged in nixpkgs):

NIX_PATH=nixpkgs=../nixpkgs nixos-generate -f do

Cross Compiling

To cross compile nixos images for other system you have to configure boot.binfmtMiscRegistrations on your host system.

For more details about this have a look at : clevers qemu-user.

Once you've run nixos-rebuild with theses options, you can use the --system option to create images for other architectures.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.