Run your nix programs with your host graphics drivers.
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Félix Baylac Jacqué 891dd0bf95
Cache cold build: prevent race condition
We had a race condition on cold cache builds. When several nix-gl-host
instances were called, they were trying to concurrently build the
cache.

This lead to some weird errors and busted caches.

We introduce a file lock preventing any concurrent access to the
cache.

We take advantage of this bug to rethink the way we build the cache
and do it in a more robust way. Instead of building it in place, we're
now building it first in a temporary directory (while making sure to
patchelf the DSOs according their final destination). We then move
this directory to the actual cache destination iff the cache has been
built successfully.
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.envrc Introduce a cache system 2022-12-05 13:33:01 +01:00
INTERALS.md Update doc 2022-12-05 15:38:58 +01:00
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README.md

NixGLHost

Running OpenGL/Cuda/OpenCL Nix-built binaries on a foreign Linux distro is quite often a challenge. These programs are relying on some host-specific graphics drivers at runtime. These drivers are host-specific, it is obviously impossible to distribute the drivers for each and every hosts setup through a pre-defined generic nix closure.

NixGLHost solves this issue by re-using your host system graphics drivers. It copies them to an isolated environment and inject the said environment to the Nix runtime closure.

Current status: experimental.

How to Use

All you have to do is to wrap your nix-built OpenGL/Cuda program with nixglhost:

For instance, let's say you want to run my-gl-program, a nix-built program on your favorite distribution. All you'll have to do is:

nixglhost my-gl-program

Example

Let's nix-build glxgears, living in the glxinfo Nixpkgs derivation then execute it with nixglhost.

cd $thisRepoCheckout
PATH=$(nix build --print-out-paths)/bin:$PATH
nixglhost $(nix build  --print-out-paths .#glxinfo)/bin/glxgears

Internals

You can read the INTERNALS.md file to learn how exactly NixGLHost works.

Support

  • [-] Proprietary Nvidia
    • GLX
    • EGL
    • Cuda
    • OpenCL
  • Mesa
    • GLX
    • EGL
    • OpenCL

Alternative Approaches

  • NixGL: tries to auto detect the host vendor driver type/version, then download/install it from its Nixpkgs derivation.

Authors/Maintainers