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

• Flokli
• Ninjatrappeur