Provided by: nix-bin_2.18.1+dfsg-1ubuntu5_amd64 
Name
nix-env --install - add packages to user environment
Synopsis
nix-env {--install | -i} args… [{--prebuilt-only | -b}] [{--attr | -A}] [--from-expression] [-E] [--from-
profile path] [--preserve-installed | -P] [--remove-all | -r]
Description
The install operation creates a new user environment, based on the current generation of the active
profile, to which a set of store paths described by args is added. The arguments args map to store paths
in a number of possible ways:
• By default, args is a set of derivation names denoting derivations in the active Nix expression. These
are realised, and the resulting output paths are installed. Currently installed derivations with a
name equal to the name of a derivation being added are removed unless the option --preserve-installed
is specified.
If there are multiple derivations matching a name in args that have the same name (e.g., gcc-3.3.6 and
gcc-4.1.1), then the derivation with the highest priority is used. A derivation can define a priority
by declaring the meta.priority attribute. This attribute should be a number, with a higher value
denoting a lower priority. The default priority is 5.
If there are multiple matching derivations with the same priority, then the derivation with the
highest version will be installed.
You can force the installation of multiple derivations with the same name by being specific about the
versions. For instance, nix-env --install gcc-3.3.6 gcc-4.1.1 will install both version of GCC (and
will probably cause a user environment conflict!).
• If --attr (-A) is specified, the arguments are attribute paths that select attributes from the top-
level Nix expression. This is faster than using derivation names and unambiguous. To find out the
attribute paths of available packages, use nix-env --query --available --attr-path.
• If --from-profile path is given, args is a set of names denoting installed store paths in the profile
path. This is an easy way to copy user environment elements from one profile to another.
• If --from-expression is given, args are Nix functions that are called with the active Nix expression
as their single argument. The derivations returned by those function calls are installed. This allows
derivations to be specified in an unambiguous way, which is necessary if there are multiple
derivations with the same name.
• If args are store derivations, then these are realised, and the resulting output paths are installed.
• If args are store paths that are not store derivations, then these are realised and installed.
• By default all outputs are installed for each derivation. That can be reduced by setting
meta.outputsToInstall.
Flags
• --prebuilt-only / -b
Use only derivations for which a substitute is registered, i.e., there is a pre-built binary available
that can be downloaded in lieu of building the derivation. Thus, no packages will be built from
source.
• --preserve-installed / -P
Do not remove derivations with a name matching one of the derivations being installed. Usually, trying
to have two versions of the same package installed in the same generation of a profile will lead to an
error in building the generation, due to file name clashes between the two versions. However, this is
not the case for all packages.
• --remove-all / -r
Remove all previously installed packages first. This is equivalent to running nix-env --uninstall '.*'
first, except that everything happens in a single transaction.
Options
The following options are allowed for all nix-env operations, but may not always have an effect.
• --file / -f path
Specifies the Nix expression (designated below as the active Nix expression) used by the --install,
--upgrade, and --query --available operations to obtain derivations. The default is ~/.nix-defexpr.
If the argument 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.
• --profile / -p path
Specifies the profile to be used by those operations that operate on a profile (designated below as
the active profile). A profile is a sequence of user environments called generations, one of which is
the current generation.
• --dry-run
For the --install, --upgrade, --uninstall, --switch-generation, --delete-generations and --rollback
operations, this flag will cause nix-env to print what would be done if this flag had not been
specified, without actually doing it.
--dry-run also prints out which paths will be substituted (i.e., downloaded) and which paths will be
built from source (because no substitute is available).
• --system-filter system
By default, operations such as --query --available show derivations matching any platform. This option
allows you to use derivations for the specified platform system.
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_PROFILE
Location of the Nix profile. Defaults to the target of the symlink ~/.nix-profile, if it exists, or
/nix/var/nix/profiles/default otherwise.
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 install a package using a specific attribute path from the active Nix expression:
$ nix-env --install --attr gcc40mips
installing `gcc-4.0.2'
$ nix-env --install --attr xorg.xorgserver
installing `xorg-server-1.2.0'
To install a specific version of gcc using the derivation name:
$ nix-env --install gcc-3.3.2
installing `gcc-3.3.2'
uninstalling `gcc-3.1'
Using attribute path for selecting a package is preferred, as it is much faster and there will not be
multiple matches.
Note the previously installed version is removed, since --preserve-installed was not specified.
To install an arbitrary version:
$ nix-env --install gcc
installing `gcc-3.3.2'
To install all derivations in the Nix expression foo.nix:
$ nix-env --file ~/foo.nix --install '.*'
To copy the store path with symbolic name gcc from another profile:
$ nix-env --install --from-profile /nix/var/nix/profiles/foo gcc
To install a specific store derivation:
$ nix-env --install /nix/store/fibjb1bfbpm5mrsxc4mh2d8n37sxh91i-gcc-3.4.3.drv
To install a specific output path:
$ nix-env --install /nix/store/y3cgx0xj1p4iv9x0pnnmdhr8iyg741vk-gcc-3.4.3
To install from a Nix expression specified on the command-line:
$ nix-env --file ./foo.nix --install --expr \
'f: (f {system = "i686-linux";}).subversionWithJava'
I.e., this evaluates to (f: (f {system = "i686-linux";}).subversionWithJava) (import ./foo.nix), thus
selecting the subversionWithJava attribute from the set returned by calling the function defined in
./foo.nix.
A dry-run tells you which paths will be downloaded or built from source:
$ nix-env --file '<nixpkgs>' --install --attr hello --dry-run
(dry run; not doing anything)
installing ‘hello-2.10’
this path will be fetched (0.04 MiB download, 0.19 MiB unpacked):
/nix/store/wkhdf9jinag5750mqlax6z2zbwhqb76n-hello-2.10
...
To install Firefox from the latest revision in the Nixpkgs/NixOS 14.12 channel:
$ nix-env --file https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/nixos-14.12.tar.gz --install --attr firefox
nix-env –install(1)