Since release 15.09 there is a new TeX Live packaging that lives entirely under attribute texlive.

For basic usage just pull texlive.combined.scheme-basic for an environment with basic LaTeX support. It typically won't work to use separately installed packages together. Instead, you can build a custom set of packages like this: texlive.combine { inherit (texlive) scheme-small collection-langkorean algorithms cm-super; } There are all the schemes, collections and a few thousand packages, as defined upstream (perhaps with tiny differences). By default you only get executables and files needed during runtime, and a little documentation for the core packages. To change that, you need to add pkgFilter function to combine. texlive.combine { # inherit (texlive) whatever-you-want; pkgFilter = pkg: pkg.tlType == "run" || pkg.tlType == "bin" || pkg.pname == "cm-super"; # elem tlType [ "run" "bin" "doc" "source" ] # there are also other attributes: version, name } You can list packages e.g. by nix-repl. $ nix-repl nix-repl> texlive.collection-<TAB>

Some tools are still missing, e.g. luajittex; some apps aren't packaged/tested yet (asymptote, biber, etc.); feature/bug: when a package is rejected by pkgFilter, its dependencies are still propagated; in case of any bugs or feature requests, file a github issue or better a pull request and /cc @vcunat.