nix-push 1 Nix nix-push generate a binary cache nix-push --dest dest-dir --bzip2 --force --link --manifest --manifest-path filename --url-prefix url paths The command nix-push produces a binary cache, a directory containing compressed Nix archives (NARs) plus some metadata of the closure of the specified store paths. This directory can then be made available through a web server to other Nix installations, allowing them to skip building from source and instead download binaries from the cache automatically. nix-push performs the following actions. Each path in paths is built (using nix-store --realise). All paths in the closure of paths are determined (using nix-store --query --requisites --include-outputs). Note that since the --include-outputs flag is used, if paths includes a store derivation, you get a combined source/binary distribution (e.g., source tarballs will be included). All store paths determined in the previous step are packaged into a NAR (using nix-store --dump) and compressed using xz or bzip2. The resulting files have the extension .nar.xz or .nar.bz2. Also for each store path, Nix generates a file with extension .narinfo containing metadata such as the references, cryptographic hash and size of each path. Optionally, a single manifest file is created that contains the same metadata as the .narinfo files. This is for compatibility with Nix versions prior to 1.2 (see nix-pull for details). A file named nix-cache-info is placed in the destination directory. The existence of this file marks the directory as a binary cache. --dest dest-dir Set the destination directory to dir, which is created if it does not exist. This flag is required. --bzip2 Compress NARs using bzip2 instead of xz -9. The latter compresses about 30% better on typical archives, decompresses about twice as fast, but compresses a lot slower and is not supported by Nix prior to version 1.2. --force Overwrite .narinfo files if they already exist. --link By default, NARs are generated in the Nix store and then copied to dest-dir. If this option is given, hard links are used instead. This only works if dest-dir is on the same filesystem as the Nix store. --manifest Force the generation of a manifest suitable for use by nix-pull. The manifest is stored as dest-dir/MANIFEST. --manifest-path filename Like --manifest, but store the manifest in filename. --url-prefix url Manifests are expected to contain the absolute URLs of NARs. For generating these URLs, the prefix url is used. It defaults to file://dest-dir. To add the closure of Thunderbird to a binary cache: $ nix-push --dest /tmp/cache $(nix-build -A thunderbird) Assuming that /tmp/cache is exported by a web server as http://example.org/cache, you can then use this cache on another machine to speed up the installation of Thunderbird: $ nix-build -A thunderbird --option binary-caches http://example.org/cache Alternatively, you could add binary-caches = http://example.org/cache to nix.conf. To also include build-time dependencies (such as source tarballs): $ nix-push --dest /tmp/cache $(nix-instantiate -A thunderbird) To generate a manifest suitable for nix-pull: $ nix-push --dest /tmp/cache $(nix-build -A thunderbird) --manifest On another machine you can then do: $ nix-pull http://example.org/cache to cause the binaries to be used by subsequent Nix operations. A binary cache with URL url only denotes a valid binary cache if the file url/nix-cache-info exists. If this file does not exist (or cannot be downloaded), the cache is ignored. If it does exist, it must be a text file containing cache properties. Here’s an example: StoreDir: /nix/store WantMassQuery: 1 The properties that are currently supported are: StoreDir The path of the Nix store to which this binary cache applies. Binaries are not relocatable — a binary built for /nix/store won’t generally work in /home/alice/store — so to prevent binaries from being used in a wrong store, a binary cache is only used if its StoreDir matches the local Nix configuration. The default is /nix/store. WantMassQuery Query operations such as nix-env -qas can cause thousands of cache queries, and thus thousands of HTTP requests, to determine which packages are available in binary form. While these requests are small, not every server may appreciate a potential onslaught of queries. If WantMassQuery is set to 0 (default), “mass queries” such as nix-env -qas will skip this cache. Thus a package may appear not to have a binary substitute. However, the binary will still be used when you actually install the package. If WantMassQuery is set to 1, mass queries will use this cache. Every time Nix needs to build some store path p, it will check each configured binary cache to see if it has a NAR file for p, until it finds one. If no cache has a NAR, Nix will fall back to building the path from source (if applicable). To see if a cache with URL url has a binary for p, Nix fetches url/h, where h is the hash part of p. Thus, if we have a cache http://nixos.org/binary-cache and we want to obtain the store path /nix/store/cj7a81wsm1ijwwpkks3725661h3263p5-glibc-2.13 then Nix will attempt to fetch http://nixos.org/binary-cache/cj7a81wsm1ijwwpkks3725661h3263p5.narinfo (Commands such as nix-env -qas will issue an HTTP HEAD request, since it only needs to know if the .narinfo file exists.) The .narinfo file is a simple text file that looks like this: StorePath: /nix/store/cj7a81wsm1ijwwpkks3725661h3263p5-glibc-2.13 URL: nar/0k6335lpbcmdgncqwkcry4dxr2m6qs77zia51684ynjgc7n5xx21.nar.bz2 Compression: bzip2 FileHash: sha256:0k6335lpbcmdgncqwkcry4dxr2m6qs77zia51684ynjgc7n5xx21 FileSize: 10119014 NarHash: sha256:120mhshkcgvn48xvxz0fjbd47k615v0viv7jy4gy7dwhmqapgd9d NarSize: 33702192 References: cj7a81wsm1ijwwpkks3725661h3263p5-glibc-2.13 jfcs9xnfbmiwqs224sb0qqsybbfl3sab-linux-headers-2.6.35.14 Deriver: xs32zzf2d58f6l5iz5fgwxrds2q5pnvn-glibc-2.13.drv System: x86_64-linux The fields are as follows: StorePath The full store path, including the name part (e.g., glibc-2.13). It must match the requested store path. URL The URL of the NAR, relative to the binary cache URL. Compression The compression method; either xz or bzip2. FileHash The SHA-256 hash of the compressed NAR. FileSize The size of the compressed NAR. NarHash The SHA-256 hash of the uncompressed NAR. This is equal to the hash of the store path as returned by nix-store -q --hash p. NarSize The size of the uncompressed NAR. References The references of the store path, without the Nix store prefix. Deriver The deriver of the store path, without the Nix store prefix. This field is optional. System The Nix platform type of this binary, if known. This field is optional. Thus, in our example, after recursively ensuring that the references exist (e.g., /nix/store/jfcs9xnfbmiwqs224sb0qqsybbfl3sab-linux-headers-2.6.35.14), Nix will fetch http://nixos.org/binary-cache/nar/0k6335lpbcmdgncqwkcry4dxr2m6qs77zia51684ynjgc7n5xx21.nar.bz2 and decompress and unpack it to /nix/store/cj7a81wsm1ijwwpkks3725661h3263p5-glibc-2.13.