Nix command

This article is about all nix subcommands. Its written for nix 2.4 or newer. Older nix versions might have different commands.

Enabling the nix command

In nix 2.4 the nix command must be enabled explicitly set experimental-features = nix-command in ~/.config/nix/nix.conf or system-wide in /etc/nix/nix.conf. In NixOS the latter one can be also achieved by using:

{ pkgs, ... }: {
   nix.extraOptions = ''
      experimental-features = nix-command
   '';
   # this is required until nix 2.4 is released
   nix.package = pkgs.nixUnstable;
}

In the following we describe all sub commands of nix:

Common flags

--debug enable debug output
--help show usage information
--help-config show configuration options
--log-format FORMAT format of log output; "raw", "internal-json", "bar" or "bar-with-logs"
--no-net disable substituters and consider all previously downloaded files up-to-date
--option NAME VALUE set a Nix configuration option (overriding nix.conf)
-L, --print-build-logs print full build logs on stderr
--quiet decrease verbosity level
--refresh consider all previously downloaded files out-of-date
-v, --verbose increase verbosity level
--version show version information

In addition, most configuration settings can be overriden using --name value. Boolean settings can be overriden using --name or --no-name. See nix --help-config for a list of configuration settings.

Enabling the nix command

Common flags

Main commands

Infrequently used commands

Utility/scripting commands