Nix command

This article is about the new nix command and all of its subcommands. The new nix command is intended to unify many different nix utilities that exist currently as many separate commands, eg. nix-build, nix-shell, etc.

This article is 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. You can do this in a few different ways.

For an individual invocation, eg.

nix --experimental-features nix-command build ...

Or by setting a user-specific configuration,

# ~/.config/nix/nix.conf
experimental-features = nix-command

in ~/.config/nix/nix.conf.

Or system-wide with

# /etc/nix/nix.conf
{ pkgs, ... }: {
   nix.extraOptions = ''
      experimental-features = nix-command
   '';
}

in /etc/nix/nix.conf on NixOS.