Prisma project with Nix

First what you want is nix-direnv with flakes support. You can go without flakes, but I can't provide you help how to get the right channels, and flakes are awesome so read the docs in this repo how to enable them for your setup.

When running direnv allow in the project directory, it will install prisma cli and the engines to your dev environment. After the whole thing is finished, check the installed prisma version:

❯ prisma --version
Environment variables loaded from .env
Warning Precompiled binaries are not available for nixos.
prisma                  : 3.1.1
@prisma/client          : 3.1.1
Current platform        : linux-nixos
Query Engine (Node-API) : libquery-engine  (at ../../../../nix/store/12i1q096cjjnqay4ayl9m27l4qsw3c2h-prisma-engines-3.1.1/lib/libquery_engine.node, resolved by PRISMA_QUERY_ENGINE_LIBRARY)
Migration Engine        : migration-engine-cli  (at ../../../../nix/store/12i1q096cjjnqay4ayl9m27l4qsw3c2h-prisma-engines-3.1.1/bin/migration-engine, resolved by PRISMA_MIGRATION_ENGINE_BINARY)
Introspection Engine    : introspection-core  (at ../../../../nix/store/12i1q096cjjnqay4ayl9m27l4qsw3c2h-prisma-engines-3.1.1/bin/introspection-engine, resolved by PRISMA_INTROSPECTION_ENGINE_BINARY)
Format Binary           : prisma-fmt  (at ../../../../nix/store/12i1q096cjjnqay4ayl9m27l4qsw3c2h-prisma-engines-3.1.1/bin/prisma-fmt, resolved by PRISMA_FMT_BINARY)
Default Engines Hash    : c22652b7e418506fab23052d569b85d3aec4883f
Studio                  : 0.423.0

As written in the output, the cli uses the binaries and node-api library described in the flake.nix env vars. Always check the prisma version installed through the flake is exactly the same as the @prisma/client version in the package.json.

When upgrading, running nix flake update should be enough to get the latest engines/cli. Remember to commit the flake.lock file to the version control. After that, update the @prisma/client in the package.json.

If working with others who do not use nix, you can modify the .envrc file so it will not try running nix commands if not using nix:

if command -v nix-shell &> /dev/null
then
    use flake
fi

If I'm having a vacation or get hit by a bus, and you need to update prisma in the nix monorepo, there's two things to update: the cli npm package and the rust engines. See an example pull request.

Updating

If the repository the flake.nix has a new version of Prisma, to get the same version to your project requires a few steps.

First make your flake to point to the latest commit in the repository:

> nix flake update

After that, direnv should catch the changed files, and install the latest Prisma to your environment. Check the version:

❯ prisma --version
Environment variables loaded from .env
Warning Precompiled binaries are not available for nixos.
prisma                  : 3.2.0
@prisma/client          : 3.1.1
Current platform        : linux-nixos
Query Engine (Node-API) : libquery-engine  (at ../../../../../nix/store/vckf62m16nxk9wyh5js2psmdsypl4lq1-prisma-engines-3.2.0/lib/libquery_engine.node, resolved by PRISMA_QUERY_ENGINE_LIBRARY)
Migration Engine        : migration-engine-cli  (at ../../../../../nix/store/vckf62m16nxk9wyh5js2psmdsypl4lq1-prisma-engines-3.2.0/bin/migration-engine, resolved by PRISMA_MIGRATION_ENGINE_BINARY)
Introspection Engine    : introspection-core  (at ../../../../../nix/store/vckf62m16nxk9wyh5js2psmdsypl4lq1-prisma-engines-3.2.0/bin/introspection-engine, resolved by PRISMA_INTROSPECTION_ENGINE_BINARY)
Format Binary           : prisma-fmt  (at ../../../../../nix/store/vckf62m16nxk9wyh5js2psmdsypl4lq1-prisma-engines-3.2.0/bin/prisma-fmt, resolved by PRISMA_FMT_BINARY)
Default Engines Hash    : afdab2f10860244038c4e32458134112852d4dad
Studio                  : 0.435.0

Now we see the @prisma/client is using an older version, so change the versioning accordingly in the package.json file. It might be required to delete the node_modules directory before running prisma generate. After a successful update the version output should list the same version for prisma and @prisma/client:

❯ prisma --version
Environment variables loaded from .env
Warning Precompiled binaries are not available for nixos.
prisma                  : 3.2.0
@prisma/client          : 3.2.0

If the nixpkgs master doesn't yet have the latest version, point to the repository that has the update by changing the nixpkgs url in the flake:

inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/master";

changes to

inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:pimeys/nixpkgs/prisma-3_2_0";

By just entering the directory, direnv should catch the changes and install the new derivation. After this is done, handle the update process as written above.