giomf/NixoScope

---

giomf/NixoScope.json

{
  "createdAt": "2026-02-25T22:16:24Z",
  "defaultBranch": "main",
  "description": "Visualize dependencies between NixOS modules",
  "fullName": "giomf/NixoScope",
  "homepage": "",
  "language": "Python",
  "name": "NixoScope",
  "pushedAt": "2026-03-14T07:53:15Z",
  "stargazersCount": 23,
  "topics": [
    "nixos"
  ],
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-17T03:02:58Z",
  "url": "https://github.com/giomf/NixoScope"
}

NixoScope

Why This Tool Exists

I recently switched to the dendritic design pattern with flake parts and needed a way to understand my module structure:

• Which modules get imported from other modules?
• Which modules get declared in what files?

Manually tracing these relationships through code was tedious and error-prone, so I built this tool to visualize the module dependency graph.

How It Works

This tool leverages the new .graph output introduced in the Nixpkgs module system. Thanks to this merged PR, we can now obtain a JSON representing the tree of modules that took part in the evaluation of a configuration.

For more details, see the announcement on NixOS Discourse.

Installation

Clone and run directly

git clone https://github.com/giomf/nixoscope
cd nixoscope
python -m nixoscope.nixoscope --help

Install from nixpkgs

nix-shell -p nixoscope
# or with flakes
nix profile install nixpkgs#nixoscope

Run without installing

nix run github:giomf/nixoscope -- --help

Usage

Obtaining the input graph:

nix eval --json '.#nixosConfigurations.<your-config>.graph' > graph.json

Read the input graph:

nixoscope --input graph.json

default: graph.json

Output format:

Graphviz:

nixoscope --format gv

default: gv

Mermaid:

nixoscope --format mm

default: gv

JSON

nixoscope --format json

default: gv

Filter by option prefix

nixoscope --option "flake.modules"

Result

![Graphviz output]!(./docs/graph.svg)

Filtered by “flake.modules”

![Graphviz output]!(./docs/graph-filtered.svg)

Disclaimer

This project uses AI as an aid.