nix Command Examples

A powerful package manager that makes package management reliable, reproducible, and declarative. nix is experimental and requires enabling experimental features. For a classic, stable interface, see tldr nix classic. Some subcommands such as build, develop, flake, registry, profile, search, repl, store, edit, why-depends, etc. have their own usage documentation. More information: https://nixos.org/manual/nix.

• Enable the nix command:

mkdir -p ~/.config/nix; echo 'experimental-features = nix-command flakes' > ~/.config/nix/nix.conf

• Search for a package in nixpkgs via its name or description:

nix search nixpkgs {{search_term}}

• Start a shell with the specified packages from nixpkgs available:

nix shell {{nixpkgs#pkg1 nixpkgs#pkg2 nixpkgs#pkg3 ...}}

• Install some packages from nixpkgs permanently:

nix profile install {{nixpkgs#pkg1 nixpkgs#pkg2 nixpkgs#pkg3 ...}}

• Remove unused paths from Nix store to free up space:

nix store gc

• Start an interactive environment for evaluating Nix expressions:

nix repl

• Display help for a specific subcommand:

nix help {{subcommand}}