Cached at:
06/26/26, 02:09 PM
# GuixPkgs: every Guix package, as a Nix flake
Source: [https://fzakaria.com/2026/06/25/guixpkgs-every-guix-package-as-a-nix-flake](https://fzakaria.com/2026/06/25/guixpkgs-every-guix-package-as-a-nix-flake)
Published 2026\-06\-25 on[Farid Zakaria's Blog](https://fzakaria.com/)
I wrote earlier about what I believe to be an*absurd idea*,[The Guix Nix Abomination](https://fzakaria.com/2026/06/05/the-guix-nix-abomination-leveraging-guix-derivations-in-nix): a tool,[guix\-transfer](https://github.com/fzakaria/guix-transfer), that takes**any**Guix derivation and rewrites it into a Nix derivation, and lets`nix\-daemon`build it\.
With this primitive in hand, I pondered what it would mean to**import the entire Guix package set**into Nix\.
> That means we could even build a`flake`that is all of Guix packages available for use\.
Well…\. Hello[GuixPkgs](https://github.com/fzakaria/guixpkgs)\. 🤯
[Nixpkgs](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs)is famously the largest package repository in the world\. GuixPkgs makes it bigger by including in the*entire*GNU Guix package set so you can mix and match Guix and Nixpkgs packages in the same flake\.
```
{
description = "A project mixing Nix and Guix";
inputs = {
nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
guixpkgs.url = "github:fzakaria/guixpkgs";
};
outputs = { self, nixpkgs, guixpkgs }:
let
system = "x86_64-linux";
pkgs = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.${system};
guixPkgs = guixpkgs.packages.${system};
in {
devShells.${system}.default = pkgs.mkShell {
buildInputs = [
pkgs.git # from Nixpkgs
guixPkgs.hello # from Guix, via GuixPkgs
];
};
};
}
```
```
❯ nix build github:fzakaria/guixpkgs#hello
❯ ./result/bin/hello
Hello, world!
```
☝ Don’t forget, that`hello`is built from Guix’s source bootstrap, a 357\-byte seed all the way up to GCC and glibc but it lands in`/nix/store`and behaves like any other Nix package\. No`guix`required on the consuming side\.
Is this just a joke or is there anything of value here?
Well, some packages only exist in Guix, notable many GNU Guile built software, like[guile\-png](https://github.com/artyom-poptsov/guile-png)that are now easily available in Nix\. 🤷
How does it work?
1. Pins a Guix commit and uses`guix time\-machine`to get derivations from*that exact*Guix thus decoupling the result from whatever`guix\-daemon`version happens to be on the host\.
2. Dumps every package’s`\.drv`and feeds them to`guix\-transfer \-\-disable\-tests \-\-emit\-nix\-dir pkgs`\.
3. Rebuilds the`by\-name/`index and records the Guix channel \+ commit \+ timestamp in`guix\-metadata\.json`\.
Realising a Guix package under Nix recompiles Guix’s**entire source bootstrap**\. That’s*hours*per closure\. To skip it, GuixPkgs ships a[Cachix](https://www.cachix.org/),`cachix use guixpkgs`, binary cache that is included in the flake\. Thank you[@domenkozar](https://github.com/domenkozar)for sponsoring me with extra storage\. 🙏
What’s next?
We can now do some truly horrendous evil stuff\. What about an overlay that replaces every package from Nixpkgs which one that exists in Guix? 😈
We can then build a NixOS machine where every package is the Guix equivalent 😱\.
This was a really fun project to pursue during[TacoSprint](https://tacosprint.org/)\.
[](https://fzakaria.com/assets/images/tacosprint_group.jpg)
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