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Life & fun · July 6, 2025

Virby, a vfkit-based Linux builder for Nix-Darwin

Virby is a module for nix-darwin that configures a lightweight linux VM as a remote build machine for nix, allowing linux packages to be built on macOS.

Virby, a vfkit-based Linux builder for Nix-Darwin launched on July 6, 2025 with 22 votes, #733 of 9,223 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.

Visit github.com ↗Alternativestop 8% of July 2025

In plain words

Virby is a nix-darwin module that sets up a lightweight Linux virtual machine to serve as a remote build machine for Nix. It enables macOS users to build Linux packages directly from their systems. The tool integrates with nix-darwin and uses vfkit, making it useful for developers working across both operating systems who need to compile packages for Linux environments without leaving macOS.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

A vfkit-based linux builder for Nix-darwin. Contribute to quinneden/virby-nix-darwin development by creating an account on GitHub.

Virby is a module for nix-darwin that configures a lightweight linux VM as a remote build machine for nix, allowing linux packages to be built on macOS. This project is modeled after nix-rosetta-builder , which provides a similar service, using lima to manage the VM. Some parts of the code in this repository are directly borrowed and adapted from that project. { inputs = { virby . url = "github:quinneden/virby-nix-darwin" ; # It is important that you dont add the line: # # inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs"; # # until after you've activated with `darwin-rebuild`. This way, the cached # image can be used and you won't have to build from source (which requires # an existing aarch64-linux…from github.com

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