nix3-develop(1) General Commands Manual nix3-develop(1)

Warning
This program is experimental and its interface is subject to change.

nix develop - run a bash shell that provides the build environment of a derivation

nix develop [option…] installable

•
Start a shell with the build environment of the default package of the flake in the current directory:
# nix develop
Typical commands to run inside this shell are:
# configurePhase
# buildPhase
# installPhase
Alternatively, you can run whatever build tools your project uses directly, e.g. for a typical Unix project:
# ./configure --prefix=$out
# make
# make install
•
Run a particular build phase directly:
# nix develop --unpack
# nix develop --configure
# nix develop --build
# nix develop --check
# nix develop --install
# nix develop --installcheck
•
Start a shell with the build environment of GNU Hello:
# nix develop nixpkgs#hello
•
Record a build environment in a profile:
# nix develop --profile /tmp/my-build-env nixpkgs#hello
•
Use a build environment previously recorded in a profile:
# nix develop /tmp/my-build-env
•
Replace all occurrences of the store path corresponding to glibc.dev with a writable directory:
# nix develop --redirect nixpkgs#glibc.dev ~/my-glibc/outputs/dev
Note that this is useful if you’re running a nix develop shell for nixpkgs#glibc in ~/my-glibc and want to compile another package against it.
•
Run a series of script commands:
# nix develop --command bash -c "mkdir build && cmake .. && make"

nix develop starts a bash shell that provides an interactive build environment nearly identical to what Nix would use to build installable. Inside this shell, environment variables and shell functions are set up so that you can interactively and incrementally build your package.

Nix determines the build environment by building a modified version of the derivation installable that just records the environment initialised by stdenv and exits. This build environment can be recorded into a profile using --profile.

The prompt used by the bash shell can be customised by setting the bash-prompt, bash-prompt-prefix, and bash-prompt-suffix settings in nix.conf or in the flake’s nixConfig attribute.

If no flake output attribute is given, nix develop tries the following flake output attributes:

  • devShells.<system>.default
  • packages.<system>.default

If a flake output name is given, nix develop tries the following flake output attributes:

  • devShells.<system>.<name>
  • packages.<system>.<name>
  • legacyPackages.<system>.<name>

•
--build
Run the build phase.
•
--check
Run the check phase.
•
--command / -c command args
Instead of starting an interactive shell, start the specified command and arguments.
•
--configure
Run the configure phase.
•
--ignore-environment / -i
Clear the entire environment (except those specified with --keep).
•
--install
Run the install phase.
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--installcheck
Run the installcheck phase.
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--keep / -k name
Keep the environment variable name.
•
--phase phase-name
The stdenv phase to run (e.g. build or configure).
•
--profile path
The profile to operate on.
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--redirect installable outputs-dir
Redirect a store path to a mutable location.
•
--unpack
Run the unpack phase.
•
--unset / -u name
Unset the environment variable name.

•
--arg name expr
Pass the value expr as the argument name to Nix functions.
•
--arg-from-file name path
Pass the contents of file path as the argument name to Nix functions.
•
--arg-from-stdin name
Pass the contents of stdin as the argument name to Nix functions.
•
--argstr name string
Pass the string string as the argument name to Nix functions.
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--debugger
Start an interactive environment if evaluation fails.
•
--eval-store store-url
The URL of the Nix store to use for evaluation, i.e. to store derivations (.drv files) and inputs referenced by them.
•
--impure
Allow access to mutable paths and repositories.
•
--include / -I path
Add path to the Nix search path. The Nix search path is initialized from the colon-separated NIX_PATH environment variable, and is used to look up the location of Nix expressions using paths enclosed in angle brackets (i.e., <nixpkgs>).
For instance, passing
-I /home/eelco/Dev
-I /etc/nixos
will cause Nix to look for paths relative to /home/eelco/Dev and /etc/nixos, in that order. This is equivalent to setting the NIX_PATH environment variable to
/home/eelco/Dev:/etc/nixos
It is also possible to match paths against a prefix. For example, passing
-I nixpkgs=/home/eelco/Dev/nixpkgs-branch
-I /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, passing
-I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/master.tar.gz
tells Nix to download and use the current contents of the master branch in the nixpkgs repository.
The URLs of the tarballs from the official nixos.org channels (see the manual page for nix-channel) can be abbreviated as channel:<channel-name>. For instance, the following two flags are equivalent:
-I nixpkgs=channel:nixos-21.05
-I nixpkgs=https://nixos.org/channels/nixos-21.05/nixexprs.tar.xz
You can also fetch source trees using flake URLs and add them to the search path. For instance,
-I nixpkgs=flake:nixpkgs
specifies that the prefix nixpkgs shall refer to the source tree downloaded from the nixpkgs entry in the flake registry. Similarly,
-I nixpkgs=flake:github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-22.05
makes <nixpkgs> refer to a particular branch of the NixOS/nixpkgs repository on GitHub.
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--override-flake original-ref resolved-ref
Override the flake registries, redirecting original-ref to resolved-ref.
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--commit-lock-file
Commit changes to the flake’s lock file.
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--inputs-from flake-url
Use the inputs of the specified flake as registry entries.
•
--no-registries
Don’t allow lookups in the flake registries.
DEPRECATED
Use --no-use-registries instead.
•
--no-update-lock-file
Do not allow any updates to the flake’s lock file.
•
--no-write-lock-file
Do not write the flake’s newly generated lock file.
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--output-lock-file flake-lock-path
Write the given lock file instead of flake.lock within the top-level flake.
•
--override-input input-path flake-url
Override a specific flake input (e.g. dwarffs/nixpkgs). This implies --no-write-lock-file.
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--recreate-lock-file
Recreate the flake’s lock file from scratch.
DEPRECATED
Use nix flake update instead.
•
--reference-lock-file flake-lock-path
Read the given lock file instead of flake.lock within the top-level flake.
•
--update-input input-path
Update a specific flake input (ignoring its previous entry in the lock file).
DEPRECATED
Use nix flake update instead.
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--debug
Set the logging verbosity level to ‘debug’.
•
--log-format format
Set the format of log output; one of raw, internal-json, bar or bar-with-logs.
•
--print-build-logs / -L
Print full build logs on standard error.
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--quiet
Decrease the logging verbosity level.
•
--verbose / -v
Increase the logging verbosity level.

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--help
Show usage information.
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--offline
Disable substituters and consider all previously downloaded files up-to-date.
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--option name value
Set the Nix configuration setting name to value (overriding nix.conf).
•
--refresh
Consider all previously downloaded files out-of-date.
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--repair
During evaluation, rewrite missing or corrupted files in the Nix store. During building, rebuild missing or corrupted store paths.
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--version
Show version information.

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--expr expr
Interpret installables as attribute paths relative to the Nix expression expr.
•
--file / -f file
Interpret installables as attribute paths relative to the Nix expression stored in file. If file is the character -, then a Nix expression will be read from standard input. Implies --impure.

Note

See man nix.conf for overriding configuration settings with command line flags.