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.

--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).

This option may be specified repeatedly. Currently, the following verbosity levels exist:

0

1

2

3

4

5

This option may be specified repeatedly. See the previous verbosity levels list.

Setting it to 0 disallows building on the local machine, which is useful when you want builds to happen only on remote builders.

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).

It's useful in cases where the bandwidth between the client and the remote builder is too low. In that case it can take more time to upload the sources to the remote builder and fetch back the result than to do the computation locally.

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 -i 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 -i pkgname --arg system \"i686-freebsd\". (Note that since the argument is a Nix string literal, you have to escape the quotes.)

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.

If ~/.nix-defexpr is a file, it is loaded as a Nix expression. If the expression is a set, it is used as the default Nix expression. If the expression is a function, an empty set is passed as argument and the return value is used as the default Nix expression.

If ~/.nix-defexpr is a directory containing a default.nix file, that file is loaded as in the above paragraph.

If ~/.nix-defexpr is a directory without a default.nix file, then its contents (both files and subdirectories) are loaded as Nix expressions. The expressions are combined into a single set, each expression under an attribute with the same name as the original file or subdirectory.

For example, if ~/.nix-defexpr contains two files, foo.nix and bar.nix, then the default Nix expression will essentially be

{
  foo = import ~/.nix-defexpr/foo.nix;
  bar = import ~/.nix-defexpr/bar.nix;
}

The file manifest.nix is always ignored. Subdirectories without a default.nix file are traversed recursively in search of more Nix expressions, but the names of these intermediate directories are not added to the attribute paths of the default Nix expression.

The command nix-channel places symlinks to the downloaded Nix expressions from each subscribed channel in this directory.

/home/eelco/Dev:/etc/nixos

will cause Nix to look for paths relative to /home/eelco/Dev and /etc/nixos, in that order. It is also possible to match paths against a prefix. For example, the value

nixpkgs=/home/eelco/Dev/nixpkgs-branch:/etc/nixos

will cause Nix to search for <nixpkgs/path> in /home/eelco/Dev/nixpkgs-branch/path and /etc/nixos/nixpkgs/path.

If a path in the Nix search 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 consist of a single top-level directory. For example, setting NIX_PATH to

nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/nixos-15.09.tar.gz

tells Nix to download the latest revision in the Nixpkgs/NixOS 15.09 channel.

A following shorthand can be used to refer to the official channels:

nixpkgs=channel:nixos-15.09

The search path can be extended using the -I option, which takes precedence over NIX_PATH.

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.