Name

nix-instantiate - instantiate store derivations from Nix expressions

Synopsis

nix-instantiate [--parse | --eval [--strict] [--json] [--xml] ] [--read-write-mode] [--arg name value] [{--attr| -A} attrPath] [--add-root path] [--expr | -E] files…

nix-instantiate --find-file files…

Description

The command nix-instantiate produces store derivations from (high-level) Nix expressions. It evaluates the Nix expressions in each of files (which defaults to ./default.nix). Each top-level expression should evaluate to a derivation, a list of derivations, or a set of derivations. The paths of the resulting store derivations are printed on standard output.

If files is the character -, then a Nix expression will be read from standard input.

Options

  • --add-root path
    See the corresponding option in nix-store.

  • --parse
    Just parse the input files, and print their abstract syntax trees on standard output as a Nix expression.

  • --eval
    Just parse and evaluate the input files, and print the resulting values on standard output. No instantiation of store derivations takes place.

    Warning

    This option produces output which can be parsed as a Nix expression which will produce a different result than the input expression when evaluated. For example, these two Nix expressions print the same result despite having different meaning:

    $ nix-instantiate --eval --expr '{ a = {}; }'
{ a = <CODE>; }
$ nix-instantiate --eval --expr '{ a = <CODE>; }'
{ a = <CODE>; }

    For human-readable output, nix eval (experimental) is more informative:

    $ nix-instantiate --eval --expr 'a: a'
<LAMBDA>
$ nix eval --expr 'a: a'
«lambda @ «string»:1:1»

    For machine-readable output, the --xml option produces unambiguous output:

    $ nix-instantiate --eval --xml --expr '{ foo = <CODE>; }'
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<expr>
  <attrs>
    <attr column="3" line="1" name="foo">
      <unevaluated />
    </attr>
  </attrs>
</expr>

  • --find-file
    Look up the given files in Nix’s search path (as specified by the NIX_PATH environment variable). If found, print the corresponding absolute paths on standard output. For instance, if NIX_PATH is nixpkgs=/home/alice/nixpkgs, then nix-instantiate --find-file nixpkgs/default.nix will print /home/alice/nixpkgs/default.nix.

  • --strict
    When used with --eval, recursively evaluate list elements and attributes. Normally, such sub-expressions are left unevaluated (since the Nix language is lazy).

    Warning

    This option can cause non-termination, because lazy data structures can be infinitely large.

  • --json
    When used with --eval, print the resulting value as an JSON representation of the abstract syntax tree rather than as a Nix expression.

  • --xml
    When used with --eval, print the resulting value as an XML representation of the abstract syntax tree rather than as a Nix expression. The schema is the same as that used by the toXML built-in.

  • --read-write-mode
    When used with --eval, perform evaluation in read/write mode so nix language features that require it will still work (at the cost of needing to do instantiation of every evaluated derivation). If this option is not enabled, there may be uninstantiated store paths in the final output.

Common Options

Most commands in Lix accept the following command-line options:

  • --help

    Prints out a summary of the command syntax and exits.

  • --version

    Prints out the Lix version number on standard output and exits.

  • --verbose / -v

    Increases the level of verbosity of diagnostic messages printed on standard error. For each Lix 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 Lix invocation failed.

    • 1 “Informational”

      Print useful messages about what Lix 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.

    • multiline

      Display a progress bar during the builds and in the lines below that one line per activity.

    • multiline-with-logs

      Displayes the raw logs, with a progress bar and activities each in a new line at the bottom.

  • --no-build-output / -Q

    By default, output written by builders to standard output and standard error is echoed to the Lix 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 Lix 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, Lix will still build the other inputs, but not the derivation itself. Without this option, Lix 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 Lix 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, Lix 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 Lix database. Most Lix operations do need database access, so those operations will fail.

    FIXME(Lix): sometimes you want --store dummy instead, because this option sometimes doesn't work. Document why this is.

  • --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 Lix configuration option name to value. This overrides settings in the Lix configuration file (see nix.conf(5)).

  • --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.

Common Environment Variables

Most commands in Lix 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, Lix 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 Lix static data directory (default prefix/share).

  • NIX_LOG_DIR
    Overrides the location of the Lix log directory (default prefix/var/log/nix).

  • NIX_STATE_DIR
    Overrides the location of the Lix state directory (default prefix/var/nix).

  • NIX_CONF_DIR
    Overrides the location of the system Lix configuration directory (default prefix/etc/nix).

  • NIX_CONFIG
    Applies settings from Lix configuration from the environment. The content is treated as if it was read from a Lix configuration file. Settings are separated by the newline character.

  • NIX_USER_CONF_FILES
    Overrides the location of the Lix 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 Lix daemon to execute Nix operations. This is necessary in multi-user Nix installations. If the Lix 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, Lix will print some evaluation statistics, such as the number of values allocated.

  • NIX_COUNT_CALLS
    If set to 1, Lix 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

Lix follows the XDG Base Directory Specification.

For backwards compatibility, commands in Lix 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 (default ~/.config)
  • XDG_STATE_HOME (default ~/.local/state)
  • XDG_CACHE_HOME (default ~/.cache)

Examples

Instantiate store derivations from a Nix expression, and build them using nix-store:

$ nix-instantiate test.nix (instantiate)
/nix/store/cigxbmvy6dzix98dxxh9b6shg7ar5bvs-perl-BerkeleyDB-0.26.drv

$ nix-store --realise $(nix-instantiate test.nix) (build)
...
/nix/store/qhqk4n8ci095g3sdp93x7rgwyh9rdvgk-perl-BerkeleyDB-0.26 (output path)

$ ls -l /nix/store/qhqk4n8ci095g3sdp93x7rgwyh9rdvgk-perl-BerkeleyDB-0.26
dr-xr-xr-x    2 eelco    users        4096 1970-01-01 01:00 lib
...

You can also give a Nix expression on the command line:

$ nix-instantiate --expr 'with import <nixpkgs> { }; hello'
/nix/store/j8s4zyv75a724q38cb0r87rlczaiag4y-hello-2.8.drv

This is equivalent to:

$ nix-instantiate '<nixpkgs>' --attr hello

Parsing and evaluating Nix expressions:

$ nix-instantiate --parse --expr '1 + 2'
1 + 2

$ nix-instantiate --eval --expr '1 + 2'
3

$ nix-instantiate --eval --xml --expr '1 + 2'
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<expr>
  <int value="3" />
</expr>

The difference between non-strict and strict evaluation:

$ nix-instantiate --eval --xml --expr '{ x = {}; }'
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<expr>
  <attrs>
    <attr column="3" line="1" name="x">
      <unevaluated />
    </attr>
  </attrs>
</expr>

$ nix-instantiate --eval --xml --strict --expr '{ x = {}; }'
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<expr>
  <attrs>
    <attr column="3" line="1" name="x">
      <attrs>
      </attrs>
    </attr>
  </attrs>
</expr>