Be not afraid, for I have solved package management

NOTE: This was an April 1st post.

Today, I am thrilled to announce the first public release of the Yixe Project. Yixe is an experimental interface to declarative build environments.

Yixe is built in synergy with the best of cloud-native technologies. It integrates with the praised YAML language to describe projects and build environments, and with the best of declarative build environment technologies available these days.

The essential GNU Hello package can be described with the following package expression:

# hello.yixe
yixe-nixpkgs-package: v0

arguments:
  - fetchurl

output:
  name: hello
  version: 2.12.1
  src: !call
    - !arguments.fetchurl
    - url: "mirror://gnu/hello/hello-2.12.1.tar.gz"
      hash: "sha256-jZkUKv2SV28wsM18tCqNxoCZmLxdYH2Idh9RLibH2yA="

This, in itself, is not sufficient for a proper declarative build environment. There is nothing locking the inputs used to build this critical package!

Projects are there to tie this loose end!

# project.yixe
yixe-project: v0

inputs:
  sources:
    nixpkgs: { npins: { channel: nixos-unstable } }

outputs:
  hello: !yixe.import-document ./hello.yixe

By using a project file, which describes the inputs in a convenient manner, one can rest assured that the yixe documents will keep building, as the inputs will be locked.

# project.yixe.lock
# THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED. DO NOT EDIT.
---
yixe-lock: v0
inputs:
  sources:
    nixpkgs:
      npins:
        pins:
          nixpkgs:
            type: Channel
            name: nixos-unstable
            url: https://releases.nixos.org/nixos/unstable/nixos-25.05pre776537.52faf482a388/nixexprs.tar.xz
            hash: '08if3l96mns2h9nmkndrq3aylq70z0q0hvpyxw8j4y4dr6hgyggs'
        version: 5

Yixe is here, ready to shake the core foundations of how package management is done. This is a serious tectonic shift. A game changer, if you will.

Package management is only the beginning, building an operating system from one declarative configuration is an achievable dream, too!

Are you up for Yixing it up?

Then quick browse the project's source, and try it out!

— Yixe

><()'>