Name
nix-env --query
- display information about packages
Synopsis
nix-env
{--query
| -q
} names…
[--installed
| --available
| -a
]
[{--status
| -s
}]
[{--attr-path
| -P
}]
[--no-name
]
[{--compare-versions
| -c
}]
[--system
]
[--drv-path
]
[--out-path
]
[--description
]
[--meta
]
[--xml
]
[--json
]
[{--prebuilt-only
| -b
}]
[{--attr
| -A
} attribute-path]
Description
The query operation displays information about either the store paths
that are installed in the current generation of the active profile
(--installed
), or the derivations that are available for installation
in the active Nix expression (--available
). It only prints information
about derivations whose symbolic name matches one of names.
The derivations are sorted by their name
attributes.
Source selection
The following flags specify the set of things on which the query operates.
-
--installed
The query operates on the store paths that are installed in the current generation of the active profile. This is the default. -
--available
;-a
The query operates on the derivations that are available in the active Nix expression.
Queries
The following flags specify what information to display about the
selected derivations. Multiple flags may be specified, in which case the
information is shown in the order given here. Note that the name of the
derivation is shown unless --no-name
is specified.
-
--xml
Print the result in an XML representation suitable for automatic processing by other tools. The root element is calleditems
, which contains aitem
element for each available or installed derivation. The fields discussed below are all stored in attributes of theitem
elements. -
--json
Print the result in a JSON representation suitable for automatic processing by other tools. -
--prebuilt-only
/-b
Show only derivations for which a substitute is registered, i.e., there is a pre-built binary available that can be downloaded in lieu of building the derivation. Thus, this shows all packages that probably can be installed quickly. -
--status
;-s
Print the status of the derivation. The status consists of three characters. The first isI
or-
, indicating whether the derivation is currently installed in the current generation of the active profile. This is by definition the case for--installed
, but not for--available
. The second isP
or-
, indicating whether the derivation is present on the system. This indicates whether installation of an available derivation will require the derivation to be built. The third isS
or-
, indicating whether a substitute is available for the derivation. -
--attr-path
;-P
Print the attribute path of the derivation, which can be used to unambiguously select it using the--attr
option available in commands that install derivations likenix-env --install
. This option only works together with--available
-
--no-name
Suppress printing of thename
attribute of each derivation. -
--compare-versions
/-c
Compare installed versions to available versions, or vice versa (if--available
is given). This is useful for quickly seeing whether upgrades for installed packages are available in a Nix expression. A column is added with the following meaning:-
<
version
A newer version of the package is available or installed. -
=
version
At most the same version of the package is available or installed. -
>
version
Only older versions of the package are available or installed. -
- ?
No version of the package is available or installed.
-
-
--system
Print thesystem
attribute of the derivation. -
--drv-path
Print the path of the store derivation. -
--out-path
Print the output path of the derivation. -
--description
Print a short (one-line) description of the derivation, if available. The description is taken from themeta.description
attribute of the derivation. -
--meta
Print all of the meta-attributes of the derivation. This option is only available with--xml
or--json
.
Options
The following options are allowed for all nix-env
operations, but may not always have an effect.
-
--file
/-f
path
Specifies the Nix expression (designated below as the active Nix expression) used by the--install
,--upgrade
, and--query --available
operations to obtain derivations. The default is~/.nix-defexpr
.If the argument starts with
http://
orhttps://
, it is interpreted as the URL of a tarball that will be downloaded and unpacked to a temporary location. The tarball must include a single top-level directory containing at least a file nameddefault.nix
. -
--profile
/-p
path
Specifies the profile to be used by those operations that operate on a profile (designated below as the active profile). A profile is a sequence of user environments called generations, one of which is the current generation. -
--dry-run
For the--install
,--upgrade
,--uninstall
,--switch-generation
,--delete-generations
and--rollback
operations, this flag will causenix-env
to print what would be done if this flag had not been specified, without actually doing it.--dry-run
also prints out which paths will be substituted (i.e., downloaded) and which paths will be built from source (because no substitute is available). -
--system-filter
system
By default, operations such as--query --available
show derivations matching any platform. This option allows you to use derivations for the specified platform system.
Common Options
Most Nix commands accept the following command-line options:
-
Prints out a summary of the command syntax and exits.
-
Prints out the Nix version number on standard output and exits.
-
--verbose
/-v
Increases the level of verbosity of diagnostic messages printed on standard error. For each Nix 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 Nix invocation failed.
-
1
“Informational”Print useful messages about what Nix 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.
-
-
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
formatThis 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.
-
-
--no-build-output
/-Q
By default, output written by builders to standard output and standard error is echoed to the Nix 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
numberSets the maximum number of build jobs that Nix will perform in parallel to the specified number. Specify
auto
to use the number of CPUs in the system. The default is specified by themax-jobs
configuration setting, which itself defaults to1
. 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. -
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 attributeenableParallelBuilding
is set totrue
, the builder passes the-jN
flag to GNU Make. It defaults to the value of thecores
configuration setting, if set, or1
otherwise. The value0
means that the builder should use all available CPU cores in the system. -
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. -
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, Nix will still build the other inputs, but not the derivation itself. Without this option, Nix 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. -
Whenever Nix 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, Nix 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).
-
When this option is used, no attempt is made to open the Nix database. Most Nix operations do need database access, so those operations will fail.
-
--arg
name valueThis option is accepted by
nix-env
,nix-instantiate
,nix-shell
andnix-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 valuebuiltins.currentSystem
for thesystem
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 valueThis 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
attrPathSelect an attribute from the top-level Nix expression being evaluated. (
nix-env
,nix-instantiate
,nix-build
andnix-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 pathxorg.xorgserver
would cause the expressione.xorg.xorgserver
to be used. Seenix-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 thebar
attribute of the fourth element of the array in thefoo
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
andnix-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 thenix-shell --packages
convenience flag instead. -
-I
pathAdd an entry to the Nix expression search path. This option may be given multiple times. Paths added through
-I
take precedence overNIX_PATH
. -
--option
name valueSet the Nix configuration option name to value. This overrides settings in the Nix configuration file (see nix.conf5).
-
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.
Environment variables
NIX_PROFILE
Location of the Nix profile. Defaults to the target of the symlink~/.nix-profile
, if it exists, or/nix/var/nix/profiles/default
otherwise.
Common Environment Variables
Most Nix commands interpret the following environment variables:
-
Indicator that tells if the current environment was set up by
nix-shell
. It can have the valuespure
orimpure
. -
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, Nix will fall back to the following list in impure and unrestricted evaluation mode:$HOME/.nix-defexpr/channels
nixpkgs=/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixpkgs
/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels
If
NIX_PATH
is set to an empty string, resolving search paths will always fail. For example, attempting to use<nixpkgs>
will produce:error: file 'nixpkgs' was not found in the Nix search path
-
Normally, the Nix store directory (typically
/nix/store
) is not allowed to contain any symlink components. This is to prevent “impure” builds. Builders sometimes “canonicalise” paths by resolving all symlink components. Thus, builds on different machines (with/nix/store
resolving to different locations) could yield different results. This is generally not a problem, except when builds are deployed to machines where/nix/store
resolves differently. If you are sure that you’re not going to do that, you can setNIX_IGNORE_SYMLINK_STORE
to1
.Note that if you’re symlinking the Nix store so that you can put it on another file system than the root file system, on Linux you’re better off using
bind
mount points, e.g.,$ mkdir /nix $ mount -o bind /mnt/otherdisk/nix /nix
Consult the mount 8 manual page for details.
-
Overrides the location of the Nix store (default
prefix/store
). -
Overrides the location of the Nix static data directory (default
prefix/share
). -
Overrides the location of the Nix log directory (default
prefix/var/log/nix
). -
Overrides the location of the Nix state directory (default
prefix/var/nix
). -
Overrides the location of the system Nix configuration directory (default
prefix/etc/nix
). -
Applies settings from Nix configuration from the environment. The content is treated as if it was read from a Nix configuration file. Settings are separated by the newline character.
-
Overrides the location of the Nix 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. -
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
. -
This variable should be set to
daemon
if you want to use the Nix daemon to execute Nix operations. This is necessary in multi-user Nix installations. If the Nix daemon's Unix socket is at some non-standard path, this variable should be set tounix://path/to/socket
. Otherwise, it should be left unset. -
If set to
1
, Nix will print some evaluation statistics, such as the number of values allocated. -
If set to
1
, Nix will print how often functions were called during Nix expression evaluation. This is useful for profiling your Nix expressions. -
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
Nix follows the XDG Base Directory Specification.
For backwards compatibility, Nix commands 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
To show installed packages:
$ nix-env --query
bison-1.875c
docbook-xml-4.2
firefox-1.0.4
MPlayer-1.0pre7
ORBit2-2.8.3
…
To show available packages:
$ nix-env --query --available
firefox-1.0.7
GConf-2.4.0.1
MPlayer-1.0pre7
ORBit2-2.8.3
…
To show the status of available packages:
$ nix-env --query --available --status
-P- firefox-1.0.7 (not installed but present)
--S GConf-2.4.0.1 (not present, but there is a substitute for fast installation)
--S MPlayer-1.0pre3 (i.e., this is not the installed MPlayer, even though the version is the same!)
IP- ORBit2-2.8.3 (installed and by definition present)
…
To show available packages in the Nix expression foo.nix
:
$ nix-env --file ./foo.nix --query --available
foo-1.2.3
To compare installed versions to what’s available:
$ nix-env --query --compare-versions
...
acrobat-reader-7.0 - ? (package is not available at all)
autoconf-2.59 = 2.59 (same version)
firefox-1.0.4 < 1.0.7 (a more recent version is available)
...
To show all packages with “zip
” in the name:
$ nix-env --query --available '.*zip.*'
bzip2-1.0.6
gzip-1.6
zip-3.0
…
To show all packages with “firefox
” or “chromium
” in the name:
$ nix-env --query --available '.*(firefox|chromium).*'
chromium-37.0.2062.94
chromium-beta-38.0.2125.24
firefox-32.0.3
firefox-with-plugins-13.0.1
…
To show all packages in the latest revision of the Nixpkgs repository:
$ nix-env --file https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/master.tar.gz --query --available