Provided by: nix-bin_2.24.9+dfsg-2ubuntu2_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 / --include path
Add an entry to the list of search paths used to resolve lookup paths. This option may be given
multiple times.
Paths added through -I take precedence over the nix-path configuration setting and the NIX_PATH
environment variable.
• --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.
Note
See man nix.conf for overriding configuration settings with command line flags.
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 search path entries used to resolve lookup paths.
This environment variable overrides the value of the nix-path configuration setting.
It can be extended using the -I option.
Example
$ export NIX_PATH=`/home/eelco/Dev:nixos-config=/etc/nixos
If NIX_PATH is set to an empty string, resolving search paths will always fail.
Example
$ NIX_PATH= nix-instantiate --eval '<nixpkgs>'
error: file 'nixpkgs' was not found in the Nix search path (add it using $NIX_PATH or -I)
• 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 python3 --packages python3 python3Packages.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 single or 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 ]; } ""
The script’s file name is passed as the first argument to the interpreter specified by the -i flag.
Aside from the very first line, which is a directive to the operating system, the additional #! nix-shell
lines do not need to be at the beginning of the file. This allows wrapping them in block comments for
languages where # does not start a comment, such as ECMAScript, Erlang, PHP, or Ruby.
nix-shell(1)