status-mobile/nix/README.md

# Description

This folder contains configuration for [Nix](https://nixos.org/), a purely functional package manager used by the Status app for its build process.

## Configuration

The main config file is [`nix/nix.conf`](/nix/nix.conf) and its main purpose is defining the [binary caches](https://nixos.org/nix/manual/#ch-basic-package-mgmt) which allow download of packages to avoid having to compile them yourself locally.

__NOTE:__ If you are in Asia you might want to add the `https://nix-cache-cn.status.im/` to be first in order of `substituters`. Removing `cache.nixos.org` could also help.

## Shell

In order to access an interactive Nix shell a user should run `make shell`.

The Nix shell is started in this repo via the [`nix/scripts/shell.sh`](/nix/scripts/shell.sh) script, which is a wrapper around the `nix-shell` command and is intended for use with our main [`Makefile`](/Makefile). This allows for an implicit use of `nix-shell` as the default shell in the `Makefile`.

Normally the shell starts without any specific target platform, if you want to change that you should export the `TARGET` env variable with appropriate value:

```bash
make shell TARGET=android
```

This way your shell and all other nix commands should run in a setup that is tailored towards Android development.

For valid values you can check the [`nix/shells.nix`](/nix/shells.nix) file.

## Using a local status-go repository

If you need to use a locally checked-out status-go repository as a dependency of status-react, you can achieve that by defining the `STATUS_GO_SRC_OVERRIDE`
environment variable.

```sh
export STATUS_GO_SRC_OVERRIDE=$GOPATH/src/github.com/status-im/status-go
# Any command that you run from now on
# will use the specified status-go location
make release-android
```

or for a one-off build:

```sh
make release-android STATUS_GO_SRC_OVERRIDE=$GOPATH/src/github.com/status-im/status-go
```

## Known Issues

### MacOS 10.15 "Catalina"

There is an unsolved issue with the root(`/`) file system in `10.15` being read-only:
https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/2925

Our current recommended workaround is putting `/nix` under `/opt/nix` and symlinking it via `/etc/synthetic.conf`:

```bash
sudo mkdir /opt/nix
sudo chown ${USER} /opt/nix
sudo sh -c "echo 'nix\t/opt/nix' >> /etc/synthetic.conf"
reboot
```

After the system reboots you should see the `/nix` symlink in place:

```bash
 % ls -l /nix
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  8 Oct 11 13:53 /nix -> /opt/nix
```

In order to be able to use Nix with a symlinked `/nix` you need to include this in your shell:

```bash
export NIX_IGNORE_SYMLINK_STORE=1
```

Add it to your `.bashrc` or any other shell config file.

__NOTE__: Your old `/nix` directory will end up in `/Users/Shared/Relocated Items/Security/nix` after OS upgrade.