Provided by: nix-bin_2.16.1+dfsg-3ubuntu1_amd64 
Name
nix-shell - start an interactive shell based on a Nix expression
Synopsis
nix-shell [--arg name value] [--argstr name value] [{--attr | -A} attrPath] [--command
cmd] [--run cmd] [--exclude regexp] [--pure] [--keep name] {{--packages | -p} {packages |
expressions} … | [path]}
Disambiguation
This man page describes the command nix-shell, which is distinct from nix shell. For
documentation on the latter, run nix shell --help or see man nix3-shell.
Description
The command nix-shell will build the dependencies of the specified derivation, but not the
derivation itself. It will then start an interactive shell in which all environment
variables defined by the derivation path have been set to their corresponding values, and
the script $stdenv/setup has been sourced. This is useful for reproducing the environment
of a derivation for development.
If path is not given, nix-shell defaults to shell.nix if it exists, and default.nix
otherwise.
If path starts with http:// or https://, it is interpreted as the URL of a tarball that
will be downloaded and unpacked to a temporary location. The tarball must include a single
top-level directory containing at least a file named default.nix.
If the derivation defines the variable shellHook, it will be run after $stdenv/setup has
been sourced. Since this hook is not executed by regular Nix builds, it allows you to
perform initialisation specific to nix-shell. For example, the derivation attribute
shellHook =
''
echo "Hello shell"
export SOME_API_TOKEN="$(cat ~/.config/some-app/api-token)"
'';
will cause nix-shell to print Hello shell and set the SOME_API_TOKEN environment variable
to a user-configured value.
Options
All options not listed here are passed to nix-store --realise, except for --arg and --attr
/ -A which are passed to nix-instantiate.
• --command cmd
In the environment of the derivation, run the shell command cmd. This command is
executed in an interactive shell. (Use --run to use a non-interactive shell instead.)
However, a call to exit is implicitly added to the command, so the shell will exit after
running the command. To prevent this, add return at the end; e.g. --command "echo
Hello; return" will print Hello and then drop you into the interactive shell. This can
be useful for doing any additional initialisation.
• --run cmd
Like --command, but executes the command in a non-interactive shell. This means (among
other things) that if you hit Ctrl-C while the command is running, the shell exits.
• --exclude regexp
Do not build any dependencies whose store path matches the regular expression regexp.
This option may be specified multiple times.
• --pure
If this flag is specified, the environment is almost entirely cleared before the
interactive shell is started, so you get an environment that more closely corresponds to
the “real” Nix build. A few variables, in particular HOME, USER and DISPLAY, are
retained.
• --packages / -p packages…
Set up an environment in which the specified packages are present. The command line
arguments are interpreted as attribute names inside the Nix Packages collection. Thus,
nix-shell --packages libjpeg openjdk will start a shell in which the packages denoted by
the attribute names libjpeg and openjdk are present.
• -i interpreter
The chained script interpreter to be invoked by nix-shell. Only applicable in #!-scripts
(described below).
• --keep name
When a --pure shell is started, keep the listed environment variables.
Common Options
Most Nix commands accept the following command-line options:
• --help
Prints out a summary of the command syntax and exits.
• --version
Prints out the Nix version number on standard output and exits.
• --verbose / -v
Increases the level of verbosity of diagnostic messages printed on standard error. For
each Nix operation, the information printed on standard output is well-defined; any
diagnostic information is printed on standard error, never on standard output.
This option may be specified repeatedly. Currently, the following verbosity levels
exist:
• 0
“Errors only”: only print messages explaining why the Nix invocation failed.
• 1
“Informational”: print useful messages about what Nix is doing. This is the default.
• 2
“Talkative”: print more informational messages.
• 3
“Chatty”: print even more informational messages.
• 4
“Debug”: print debug information.
• 5
“Vomit”: print vast amounts of debug information.
• --quiet
Decreases the level of verbosity of diagnostic messages printed on standard error. This
is the inverse option to -v / --verbose.
This option may be specified repeatedly. See the previous verbosity levels list.
• --log-format format
This option can be used to change the output of the log format, with format being one
of:
• raw
This is the raw format, as outputted by nix-build.
• internal-json
Outputs the logs in a structured manner.
Warning
While the schema itself is relatively stable, the format of the error-messages
(namely of the msg-field) can change between releases.
• bar
Only display a progress bar during the builds.
• bar-with-logs
Display the raw logs, with the progress bar at the bottom.
• --no-build-output / -Q
By default, output written by builders to standard output and standard error is echoed
to the Nix command’s standard error. This option suppresses this behaviour. Note that
the builder’s standard output and error are always written to a log file in
prefix/nix/var/log/nix.
• --max-jobs / -j number
Sets the maximum number of build jobs that Nix will perform in parallel to the specified
number. Specify auto to use the number of CPUs in the system. The default is specified
by the max-jobs configuration setting, which itself defaults to 1. A higher value is
useful on SMP systems or to exploit I/O latency.
Setting it to 0 disallows building on the local machine, which is useful when you want
builds to happen only on remote builders.
• --cores
Sets the value of the NIX_BUILD_CORES environment variable in the invocation of
builders. Builders can use this variable at their discretion to control the maximum
amount of parallelism. For instance, in Nixpkgs, if the derivation attribute
enableParallelBuilding is set to true, the builder passes the -jN flag to GNU Make. It
defaults to the value of the cores configuration setting, if set, or 1 otherwise. The
value 0 means that the builder should use all available CPU cores in the system.
• --max-silent-time
Sets the maximum number of seconds that a builder can go without producing any data on
standard output or standard error. The default is specified by the max-silent-time
configuration setting. 0 means no time-out.
• --timeout
Sets the maximum number of seconds that a builder can run. The default is specified by
the timeout configuration setting. 0 means no timeout.
• --keep-going / -k
Keep going in case of failed builds, to the greatest extent possible. That is, if
building an input of some derivation fails, Nix will still build the other inputs, but
not the derivation itself. Without this option, Nix stops if any build fails (except for
builds of substitutes), possibly killing builds in progress (in case of parallel or
distributed builds).
• --keep-failed / -K
Specifies that in case of a build failure, the temporary directory (usually in /tmp) in
which the build takes place should not be deleted. The path of the build directory is
printed as an informational message.
• --fallback
Whenever Nix attempts to build a derivation for which substitutes are known for each
output path, but realising the output paths through the substitutes fails, fall back on
building the derivation.
The most common scenario in which this is useful is when we have registered substitutes
in order to perform binary distribution from, say, a network repository. If the
repository is down, the realisation of the derivation will fail. When this option is
specified, Nix will build the derivation instead. Thus, installation from binaries falls
back on installation from source. This option is not the default since it is generally
not desirable for a transient failure in obtaining the substitutes to lead to a full
build from source (with the related consumption of resources).
• --readonly-mode
When this option is used, no attempt is made to open the Nix database. Most Nix
operations do need database access, so those operations will fail.
• --arg name value
This option is accepted by nix-env, nix-instantiate, nix-shell and nix-build. When
evaluating Nix expressions, the expression evaluator will automatically try to call
functions that it encounters. It can automatically call functions for which every
argument has a default value (e.g., { argName ? defaultValue }: ...). With --arg, you
can also call functions that have arguments without a default value (or override a
default value). That is, if the evaluator encounters a function with an argument named
name, it will call it with value value.
For instance, the top-level default.nix in Nixpkgs is actually a function:
{ # The system (e.g., `i686-linux') for which to build the packages.
system ? builtins.currentSystem
...
}: ...
So if you call this Nix expression (e.g., when you do nix-env --install --attr
pkgname), the function will be called automatically using the value
builtins.currentSystem for the system argument. You can override this using --arg,
e.g., nix-env --install --attr pkgname --arg system \"i686-freebsd\". (Note that
since the argument is a Nix string literal, you have to escape the quotes.)
• --argstr name value
This option is like --arg, only the value is not a Nix expression but a string. So
instead of --arg system \"i686-linux\" (the outer quotes are to keep the shell happy)
you can say --argstr system i686-linux.
• --attr / -A attrPath
Select an attribute from the top-level Nix expression being evaluated. (nix-env, nix-
instantiate, nix-build and nix-shell only.) The attribute path attrPath is a sequence of
attribute names separated by dots. For instance, given a top-level Nix expression e, the
attribute path xorg.xorgserver would cause the expression e.xorg.xorgserver to be used.
See nix-env --install for some concrete examples.
In addition to attribute names, you can also specify array indices. For instance, the
attribute path foo.3.bar selects the bar attribute of the fourth element of the array in
the foo attribute of the top-level expression.
• --expr / -E
Interpret the command line arguments as a list of Nix expressions to be parsed and
evaluated, rather than as a list of file names of Nix expressions. (nix-instantiate,
nix-build and nix-shell only.)
For nix-shell, this option is commonly used to give you a shell in which you can build
the packages returned by the expression. If you want to get a shell which contain the
built packages ready for use, give your expression to the nix-shell --packages
convenience flag instead.
• -I path
Add an entry to the Nix expression search path. This option may be given multiple
times. Paths added through -I take precedence over NIX_PATH.
• --option name value
Set the Nix configuration option name to value. This overrides settings in the Nix
configuration file (see nix.conf5).
• --repair
Fix corrupted or missing store paths by redownloading or rebuilding them. Note that this
is slow because it requires computing a cryptographic hash of the contents of every path
in the closure of the build. Also note the warning under nix-store --repair-path.
Environment variables
• NIX_BUILD_SHELL
Shell used to start the interactive environment. Defaults to the bash found in
<nixpkgs>, falling back to the bash found in PATH if not found.
Common Environment Variables
Most Nix commands interpret the following environment variables:
• IN_NIX_SHELL
Indicator that tells if the current environment was set up by nix-shell. It can have the
values pure or impure.
• NIX_PATH
A colon-separated list of directories used to look up the location of Nix expressions
using paths enclosed in angle brackets (i.e., <path>), e.g. /home/eelco/Dev:/etc/nixos.
It can be extended using the -I option.
If NIX_PATH is not set at all, Nix will fall back to the following list in impure and
unrestricted evaluation mode:
1. $HOME/.nix-defexpr/channels
2. nixpkgs=/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixpkgs
3. /nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels
If NIX_PATH is set to an empty string, resolving search paths will always fail. For
example, attempting to use <nixpkgs> will produce:
error: file 'nixpkgs' was not found in the Nix search path
• NIX_IGNORE_SYMLINK_STORE
Normally, the Nix store directory (typically /nix/store) is not allowed to contain any
symlink components. This is to prevent “impure” builds. Builders sometimes
“canonicalise” paths by resolving all symlink components. Thus, builds on different
machines (with /nix/store resolving to different locations) could yield different
results. This is generally not a problem, except when builds are deployed to machines
where /nix/store resolves differently. If you are sure that you’re not going to do that,
you can set NIX_IGNORE_SYMLINK_STORE to 1.
Note that if you’re symlinking the Nix store so that you can put it on another file
system than the root file system, on Linux you’re better off using bind mount points,
e.g.,
$ mkdir /nix
$ mount -o bind /mnt/otherdisk/nix /nix
Consult the mount 8 manual page for details.
• NIX_STORE_DIR
Overrides the location of the Nix store (default prefix/store).
• NIX_DATA_DIR
Overrides the location of the Nix static data directory (default prefix/share).
• NIX_LOG_DIR
Overrides the location of the Nix log directory (default prefix/var/log/nix).
• NIX_STATE_DIR
Overrides the location of the Nix state directory (default prefix/var/nix).
• NIX_CONF_DIR
Overrides the location of the system Nix configuration directory (default
prefix/etc/nix).
• NIX_CONFIG
Applies settings from Nix configuration from the environment. The content is treated as
if it was read from a Nix configuration file. Settings are separated by the newline
character.
• NIX_USER_CONF_FILES
Overrides the location of the Nix user configuration files to load from.
The default are the locations according to the XDG Base Directory Specification. See
the XDG Base Directories sub-section for details.
The variable is treated as a list separated by the : token.
• TMPDIR
Use the specified directory to store temporary files. In particular, this includes
temporary build directories; these can take up substantial amounts of disk space. The
default is /tmp.
• NIX_REMOTE
This variable should be set to daemon if you want to use the Nix daemon to execute Nix
operations. This is necessary in multi-user Nix installations. If the Nix daemon’s Unix
socket is at some non-standard path, this variable should be set to
unix://path/to/socket. Otherwise, it should be left unset.
• NIX_SHOW_STATS
If set to 1, Nix will print some evaluation statistics, such as the number of values
allocated.
• NIX_COUNT_CALLS
If set to 1, Nix will print how often functions were called during Nix expression
evaluation. This is useful for profiling your Nix expressions.
• GC_INITIAL_HEAP_SIZE
If Nix has been configured to use the Boehm garbage collector, this variable sets the
initial size of the heap in bytes. It defaults to 384 MiB. Setting it to a low value
reduces memory consumption, but will increase runtime due to the overhead of garbage
collection.
XDG Base Directories
Nix follows the XDG Base Directory Specification.
For backwards compatibility, Nix commands will follow the standard only when use-xdg-base-
directories is enabled. New Nix commands (experimental) conform to the standard by
default.
The following environment variables are used to determine locations of various state and
configuration files:
• [XDG_CONFIG_HOME]{#env-XDGCONFIGHOME} (default ~/.config)
• [XDG_STATE_HOME]{#env-XDGSTATEHOME} (default ~/.local/state)
• [XDG_CACHE_HOME]{#env-XDGCACHEHOME} (default ~/.cache)
Examples
To build the dependencies of the package Pan, and start an interactive shell in which to
build it:
$ nix-shell '<nixpkgs>' --attr pan
[nix-shell]$ eval ${unpackPhase:-unpackPhase}
[nix-shell]$ cd $sourceRoot
[nix-shell]$ eval ${patchPhase:-patchPhase}
[nix-shell]$ eval ${configurePhase:-configurePhase}
[nix-shell]$ eval ${buildPhase:-buildPhase}
[nix-shell]$ ./pan/gui/pan
The reason we use form eval ${configurePhase:-configurePhase} here is because those
packages that override these phases do so by exporting the overridden values in the
environment variable of the same name. Here bash is being told to either evaluate the
contents of ‘configurePhase’, if it exists as a variable, otherwise evaluate the
configurePhase function.
To clear the environment first, and do some additional automatic initialisation of the
interactive shell:
$ nix-shell '<nixpkgs>' --attr pan --pure \
--command 'export NIX_DEBUG=1; export NIX_CORES=8; return'
Nix expressions can also be given on the command line using the -E and -p flags. For
instance, the following starts a shell containing the packages sqlite and libX11:
$ nix-shell --expr 'with import <nixpkgs> { }; runCommand "dummy" { buildInputs = [ sqlite xorg.libX11 ]; } ""'
A shorter way to do the same is:
$ nix-shell --packages sqlite xorg.libX11
[nix-shell]$ echo $NIX_LDFLAGS
… -L/nix/store/j1zg5v…-sqlite-3.8.0.2/lib -L/nix/store/0gmcz9…-libX11-1.6.1/lib …
Note that -p accepts multiple full nix expressions that are valid in the buildInputs = [
... ] shown above, not only package names. So the following is also legal:
$ nix-shell --packages sqlite 'git.override { withManual = false; }'
The -p flag looks up Nixpkgs in the Nix search path. You can override it by passing -I or
setting NIX_PATH. For example, the following gives you a shell containing the Pan package
from a specific revision of Nixpkgs:
$ nix-shell --packages pan -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/8a3eea054838b55aca962c3fbde9c83c102b8bf2.tar.gz
[nix-shell:~]$ pan --version
Pan 0.139
Use as a #!-interpreter
You can use nix-shell as a script interpreter to allow scripts written in arbitrary
languages to obtain their own dependencies via Nix. This is done by starting the script
with the following lines:
#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i real-interpreter --packages packages
where real-interpreter is the “real” script interpreter that will be invoked by nix-shell
after it has obtained the dependencies and initialised the environment, and packages are
the attribute names of the dependencies in Nixpkgs.
The lines starting with #! nix-shell specify nix-shell options (see above). Note that you
cannot write #! /usr/bin/env nix-shell -i ... because many operating systems only allow
one argument in #! lines.
For example, here is a Python script that depends on Python and the prettytable package:
#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i python --packages python pythonPackages.prettytable
import prettytable
# Print a simple table.
t = prettytable.PrettyTable(["N", "N^2"])
for n in range(1, 10): t.add_row([n, n * n])
print t
Similarly, the following is a Perl script that specifies that it requires Perl and the
HTML::TokeParser::Simple and LWP packages:
#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i perl --packages perl perlPackages.HTMLTokeParserSimple perlPackages.LWP
use HTML::TokeParser::Simple;
# Fetch nixos.org and print all hrefs.
my $p = HTML::TokeParser::Simple->new(url => 'http://nixos.org/');
while (my $token = $p->get_tag("a")) {
my $href = $token->get_attr("href");
print "$href\n" if $href;
}
Sometimes you need to pass a simple Nix expression to customize a package like Terraform:
#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i bash --packages "terraform.withPlugins (plugins: [ plugins.openstack ])"
terraform apply
Note
You must use double quotes (") when passing a simple Nix expression in a nix-shell
shebang.
Finally, using the merging of multiple nix-shell shebangs the following Haskell script
uses a specific branch of Nixpkgs/NixOS (the 20.03 stable branch):
#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i runghc --packages "haskellPackages.ghcWithPackages (ps: [ps.download-curl ps.tagsoup])"
#! nix-shell -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/nixos-20.03.tar.gz
import Network.Curl.Download
import Text.HTML.TagSoup
import Data.Either
import Data.ByteString.Char8 (unpack)
-- Fetch nixos.org and print all hrefs.
main = do
resp <- openURI "https://nixos.org/"
let tags = filter (isTagOpenName "a") $ parseTags $ unpack $ fromRight undefined resp
let tags' = map (fromAttrib "href") tags
mapM_ putStrLn $ filter (/= "") tags'
If you want to be even more precise, you can specify a specific revision of Nixpkgs:
#! nix-shell -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/0672315759b3e15e2121365f067c1c8c56bb4722.tar.gz
The examples above all used -p to get dependencies from Nixpkgs. You can also use a Nix
expression to build your own dependencies. For example, the Python example could have been
written as:
#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell deps.nix -i python
where the file deps.nix in the same directory as the #!-script contains:
with import <nixpkgs> {};
runCommand "dummy" { buildInputs = [ python pythonPackages.prettytable ]; } ""
nix-shell(1)