Installation

Navi needs a working Nix installation with flakes enabled. It does not need to be installed on the machines you deploy to. Those only need an SSH server and a Nix daemon.

Run without installing

You can run Navi straight from the flake:

nix run github:cafkafk/navi -- --help

This is the quickest way to try a command without changing your environment.

Add it to a flake

To pin Navi in a project, add it as an input and use the package it exposes:

{
  inputs.navi.url = "github:cafkafk/navi";

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, navi, ... }: {
    # navi.packages.<system>.navi
  };
}

Development shell

If you are working on Navi itself, the repository ships a development shell with the Rust toolchain, Nix tooling, and mdBook for this manual:

nix develop

From there, cargo build produces the binary and mdbook serve docs serves this manual locally.

Enabling flakes

If Nix reports that flakes are an experimental feature, add this to your Nix configuration:

experimental-features = nix-command flakes

The rest of the tutorial assumes flakes are enabled.