Cachix Deploy is Generally Available and Cachix 1.10

After three years in beta, Cachix Deploy is now generally available.

Cachix Deploy GA

Back in July 2022, we launched Cachix Deploy in public beta. Since then, it has seen extensive usage with thousands of agents deployed - from developer laptops to production fleets.

Cachix Deploy provides continuous deployments to any Nix profile (NixOS, nix-darwin, or home-manager) using a binary cache. The architecture is simple: agents pull from your binary cache and activate new profiles, with no evaluation or building done on the target machines.

What’s Changed Since Beta

Based on community feedback, we’ve shipped several improvements:

• Multiple workspaces - Organize your agents into separate workspaces with different configurations and access controls
• Auto-rollback - Agents can now execute health checks and automatically rollback if something goes wrong during deployment
• Improved reliability - Enhanced reconnection logic and better handling of network interruptions
• Deployment history - Full visibility into past deployments with the ability to rollback to any previous state

Getting Started

If you’re new to Cachix Deploy, the getting started guide walks you through setting up your first agent and deployment.

The gist is:

1. Run an agent on your machine:

   $ cachix deploy agent myagent
   

2. Build your configuration and push to a binary cache

3. Deploy with a specification file:

   $ cachix deploy activate cachix-deploy.json
   

Pricing

Cachix Deploy agents are now included in all plans:

• Free: 20 agents
• Starter: 100 agents
• Standard: 200 agents
• Pro: 1000 agents

See cachix.org/pricing for full details.

Cachix 1.10: Introducing cachix doctor

The v1.10 release of the Cachix CLI introduces cachix doctor - a diagnostic tool that helps you identify and fix common configuration issues.

What It Checks

Running cachix doctor validates your entire Cachix setup:

• Configuration - Verifies your config file exists and contains an auth token
• Daemon status - Checks if the Cachix daemon is running and responsive
• Cache connectivity - Tests connectivity to your binary caches
• Authentication - Validates your auth token and permissions for each cache
• Signing keys - Confirms signing keys are configured for pushing

Usage

Simply run:

$ cachix doctor
Cachix Doctor
=============

Configuration
  ✓ Config file
  ✓ Auth token

Daemon
  ✓ Status
  Socket: /run/user/1000/cachix/cachix-daemon.sock

Cache: mycache
  URI: https://mycache.cachix.org
  Public: no
  Permission: admin
  ✓ Signing key
  ✓ Connectivity
  ✓ Authentication

All checks passed.

If issues are detected, cachix doctor provides clear diagnostics:

Cache: mycache
  ✗ Authentication
    Auth token invalid or cache is private

You can also check if a specific store path exists in a cache:

$ cachix doctor -c mycache /nix/store/abc123...-hello-2.12.1
Store Path
  Query: /nix/store/abc123...-hello-2.12.1
  Hash: abc123...
  Cache: mycache
  ✓ Status: found in cache

Options

• -c, --cache CACHE-NAME - Check a specific cache
• STORE-PATH - Check if a store path exists in the cache

Additionally, cachix daemon doctor can be used to check daemon health and connectivity when the daemon is running.

Upgrading

To upgrade to the latest Cachix CLI:

$ nix-env -iA cachix -f https://cachix.org/api/v1/install

Or if you’re using Cachix from nixpkgs, update to the latest version.

Happy deploying!