Nix Embedded Highlighter

A lightweight VS Code / VSCodium extension that brings native syntax highlighting to embedded languages within Nix multiline strings ('' ... '').

Designed for the Digital Phoenix ecosystem, built for Nixers who are tired of looking at grey walls of text in their shellHook, extraConfig, or runCommand blocks.

Requirements

This extension requires the standard Nix IDE to be installed, as it injects its rules directly into string.quoted.other.nix.

How it works

Just drop a comment language tag immediately after the opening '' in your Nix file. The extension uses TextMate Grammar Injections to overlay the correct syntax highlighting without breaking the host Nix language scope.

Zero dependencies. Lightning fast.

Example

shellHook = '' # bash
    echo "This is now properly highlighted as Bash!"
    if [ -d /tmp ]; then
        ls -la /tmp
    fi
'';

Supported Languages

Deep Nesting

It even works with nested multi-line strings generated natively by builders:

myConfig = pkgs.writeText "config.yaml" '' # bash
    cat > $out << 'EOF'

    # yaml
    server:
      port: 8080
      host: 0.0.0.0
    EOF
'';

Philosophy

Deceptive Simplicity. The plugin consists of three core files and relies entirely on VS Code's native grammar engine. It does not spawn background processes or parse ASTs. It simply tells the editor how to interpret the text you were already writing.

"Pandora Device, OPEN!"

License

MIT