Nix configuration directory for the MMGen Wallet suite
NOTE: If you plan to make changes to the files in this directory, first copy it
(e.g. `cp -a nix mynix`) and then make your changes in the copied directory.
Also make sure to replace ‘nix’ with ‘mynix’ (e.g.) in the examples below.
Only BTC and a bare minimum of packages are enabled by default.
For altcoin and additional package support, copy the file ‘user-packages.nix’ to
your MMGen datadir (~/.mmgen) and edit, uncommenting the relevant lines. For an
XMR-enabled setup, for example, you’d uncomment the system package ‘monero-cli’
and Python packages ‘monero’, ‘pycryptodome’ and ‘pysocks’.
From the mmgen-wallet repo root, you may build individual system packages in the
MMGen Wallet environment as follows (we’ll use the curl package in this example):
$ nix-build nix --attr curl
To build all configured packages in one go, run ‘nix-build nix’ without
additional arguments.
The last lines of nix-build’s output are store paths in ‘/nix/store/’, which
you may optionally install into your default environment as follows:
$ nix-env --install <store path>
Note that use of MMGen Wallet from the default environment is discouraged in
favor of the custom shell environment, which we’ll now describe.
From the mmgen-wallet repo root, execute:
$ nix-shell nix
This will build any unbuilt configured packages and drop you to the custom shell
environment. At this point you may run the test suite:
[nix-shell:... $] test/test-release -FA
or proceed to use MMGen Wallet as with any conventional installation.
For greater isolation, you can invoke nix-shell with the ‘--pure’ option. This
will make executables from your native environment inaccessible within the
shell, so you may need to add some additional tools to your environment such as
a text editor. For examples, refer to ‘user-packages.nix’
Speedup tip: Look for the commented-out ‘url =’ lines in the *.nix files in
this directory, and make local shallow clones of the corresponding remote git
repositories using ‘git clone --depth=1’ plus ‘--revision=<commit>’ or
‘--branch=<tag>’. Then uncomment the local paths, adjusting them to suit.
This will also allow you to use your installation in an offline environment.
NixOS:
To install the MMGen Wallet environment under NixOS, copy the contents of the ‘nix’
directory to ‘/etc/nixos/mmgen-project’ and add ‘./mmgen-project/nixos-packages.nix’
to your imports list in ‘configuration.nix’. If altcoin support or additional
packages are required, edit ‘user-packages.nix’ in ‘/etc/nixos/mmgen-project’ as
described above for the copy of that file in the MMGen datadir. Rebuild NixOS.
From the mmgen-wallet repo root, execute:
export PYTHONPATH=$(pwd)
export PATH=$(pwd)/cmds:$PATH
You can now test and use MMGen Wallet in your native shell environment.
