Utilizing Nix to Manage Build Environments to Improve Performance and Efficiency of Build Farms

Abstract

This thesis explores the use of Nix, a lazy purely functional package manager, in the context of a build farm for static websites. With a trend towards high-end web performance, the development of the Jamstack architecture, and the rise of static site generators, static websites have made a resurgence. With the return of static websites came the demand for infrastructure and deployment services such as Netlify. This thesis delves into Netlify’s build farm and provides solutions for how Nix, due to its properties of reliable dependency information, support for multiple versions, and binary caching, can improve the performance and efficiency for the management of build environments for build farms.