shellHook =
  ''
    echo "Hello shell"
  '';

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.

$ nix-shell '<nixpkgs>' -A pan
[nix-shell]$ unpackPhase
[nix-shell]$ cd pan-*
[nix-shell]$ configurePhase
[nix-shell]$ buildPhase
[nix-shell]$ ./pan/gui/pan

$ nix-shell '<nixpkgs>' -A pan --pure \
    --command 'export NIX_DEBUG=1; export NIX_CORES=8; return'

$ nix-shell -E 'with import <nixpkgs> { }; runCommand "dummy" { buildInputs = [ sqlite xorg.libX11 ]; } ""'

$ nix-shell -p 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 ...

$ nix-shell -p pan -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/8a3eea054838b55aca962c3fbde9c83c102b8bf2.tar.gz
[nix-shell:~]$ pan --version
Pan 0.139

#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i real-interpreter -p packages

#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i python -p 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

#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i perl -p 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;
}

#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i bash -p "terraform.withPlugins (plugins: [ plugins.openstack ])"
terraform apply

You must use double quotes (") when passing a simple Nix expression in a nix-shell shebang.

#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i runghc -p "haskellPackages.ghcWithPackages (ps: [ps.HTTP ps.tagsoup])"
#! nix-shell -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/nixos-18.03.tar.gz
import Network.HTTP
import Text.HTML.TagSoup
-- Fetch nixos.org and print all hrefs.
main = do
  resp <- Network.HTTP.simpleHTTP (getRequest "http://nixos.org/")
  body <- getResponseBody resp
  let tags = filter (isTagOpenName "a") $ parseTags body
  let tags' = map (fromAttrib "href") tags
  mapM_ putStrLn $ filter (/= "") tags'

#! nix-shell -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-channels/archive/0672315759b3e15e2121365f067c1c8c56bb4722.tar.gz

#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell deps.nix -i python

with import <nixpkgs> {};
runCommand "dummy" { buildInputs = [ python pythonPackages.prettytable ]; } ""

/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.