# Overlays

This chapter describes how to extend and change Nixpkgs using overlays. Overlays are used to add layers in the fixed-point used by Nixpkgs to compose the set of all packages.

Nixpkgs can be configured with a list of overlays, which are applied in order. This means that the order of the overlays can be significant if multiple layers override the same package.

## Installing overlays

The list of overlays can be set either explicitly in a Nix expression, or through `<nixpkgs-overlays>` or user configuration files.

### Set overlays in NixOS or Nix expressions

On a NixOS system the value of the `nixpkgs.overlays` option, if present, is passed to the system Nixpkgs directly as an argument. Note that this does not affect the overlays for non-NixOS operations (e.g. `nix-env`), which are looked up independently.

The list of overlays can be passed explicitly when importing nixpkgs, for example `import <nixpkgs> { overlays = [ overlay1 overlay2 ]; }`.

Further overlays can be added by calling the `pkgs.extend` or `pkgs.appendOverlays`, although it is often preferable to avoid these functions, because they recompute the Nixpkgs fixpoint, which is somewhat expensive to do.

### Install overlays via configuration lookup

The list of overlays is determined as follows.

1. First, if an `overlays` argument to the Nixpkgs function itself is given, then that is used and no path lookup will be performed.

2. Otherwise, if the Nix path entry `<nixpkgs-overlays>` exists, we look for overlays at that path, as described below.

   See the section on `NIX_PATH` in the Nix manual for more details on how to set a value for `<nixpkgs-overlays>.`

3. If one of `~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays.nix` and `~/.config/nixpkgs/overlays/` exists, then we look for overlays at that path, as described below. It is an error if both exist.

If we are looking for overlays at a path, then there are two cases:

- If the path is a file, then the file is imported as a Nix expression and used as the list of overlays.

- If the path is a directory, then we take the content of the directory, order it lexicographically, and attempt to interpret each as an overlay by:

  - Importing the file, if it is a `.nix` file.

  - Importing a top-level `default.nix` file, if it is a directory.

Because overlays that are set in NixOS configuration do not affect non-NixOS operations such as `nix-env`, the `overlays.nix` option provides a convenient way to use the same overlays for a NixOS system configuration and user configuration: the same file can be used as `overlays.nix` and imported as the value of `nixpkgs.overlays`.

## Defining overlays

Overlays are Nix functions which accept two arguments, conventionally called `self` and `super`, and return a set of packages. For example, the following is a valid overlay.

    self: super:

    {
      boost = super.boost.override {
        python = self.python3;
      };
      rr = super.callPackage ./pkgs/rr {
        stdenv = self.stdenv_32bit;
      };
    }

The first argument (`self`) corresponds to the final package set. You should use this set for the dependencies of all packages specified in your overlay. For example, all the dependencies of `rr` in the example above come from `self`, as well as the overridden dependencies used in the `boost` override.

The second argument (`super`) corresponds to the result of the evaluation of the previous stages of Nixpkgs. It does not contain any of the packages added by the current overlay, nor any of the following overlays. This set should be used either to refer to packages you wish to override, or to access functions defined in Nixpkgs. For example, the original recipe of `boost` in the above example, comes from `super`, as well as the `callPackage` function.

The value returned by this function should be a set similar to `pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix`, containing overridden and/or new packages.

Overlays are similar to other methods for customizing Nixpkgs, in particular the `packageOverrides` attribute described in . Indeed, `packageOverrides` acts as an overlay with only the `super` argument. It is therefore appropriate for basic use, but overlays are more powerful and easier to distribute.