lix/src/nix/derivation-show.md
Qyriad 194ba8a02f docs: guide to installables docs in installable commands' docs
The installables syntax is not documented in any of the man pages or
docbook pages for any of those individual commands. And while these
commands really should at least peripherally individually document how
installables work, in the meantime we can at least direct people to the
right place.

This commit also clarifies the unexpected fact that `nix profile remove`
and `nix profile upgrade` do *not* take installables.

Change-Id: I3b1453cb197a613bbab639c66a466365c3592c6d
2024-04-29 08:06:05 -06:00

3.4 KiB

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Note: this command's interface is based heavily around installables, which you may want to read about first (nix --help).

Examples

  • Show the store derivation that results from evaluating the Hello package:

    # nix derivation show nixpkgs#hello
    {
      "/nix/store/s6rn4jz1sin56rf4qj5b5v8jxjm32hlk-hello-2.10.drv": {
      }
    }
    
  • Show the full derivation graph (if available) that produced your NixOS system:

    # nix derivation show -r /run/current-system
    
  • Print all files fetched using fetchurl by Firefox's dependency graph:

    # nix derivation show -r nixpkgs#firefox \
      | jq -r '.[] | select(.outputs.out.hash and .env.urls) | .env.urls' \
      | uniq | sort
    

    Note that .outputs.out.hash selects fixed-output derivations (derivations that produce output with a specified content hash), while .env.urls selects derivations with a urls attribute.

Description

This command prints on standard output a JSON representation of the store derivations to which installables evaluate.

Store derivations are used internally by Nix. They are store paths with extension .drv that represent the build-time dependency graph to which a Nix expression evaluates.

By default, this command only shows top-level derivations, but with --recursive, it also shows their dependencies.

The JSON output is a JSON object whose keys are the store paths of the derivations, and whose values are a JSON object with the following fields:

  • name: The name of the derivation. This is used when calculating the store paths of the derivation's outputs.

  • outputs: Information about the output paths of the derivation. This is a JSON object with one member per output, where the key is the output name and the value is a JSON object with these fields:

    • path: The output path.
    • hashAlgo: For fixed-output derivations, the hashing algorithm (e.g. sha256), optionally prefixed by r: if hash denotes a NAR hash rather than a flat file hash.
    • hash: For fixed-output derivations, the expected content hash in base-16.

    Example:

    "outputs": {
      "out": {
        "path": "/nix/store/2543j7c6jn75blc3drf4g5vhb1rhdq29-source",
        "hashAlgo": "r:sha256",
        "hash": "6fc80dcc62179dbc12fc0b5881275898f93444833d21b89dfe5f7fbcbb1d0d62"
      }
    }
    
  • inputSrcs: A list of store paths on which this derivation depends.

  • inputDrvs: A JSON object specifying the derivations on which this derivation depends, and what outputs of those derivations. For example,

    "inputDrvs": {
      "/nix/store/6lkh5yi7nlb7l6dr8fljlli5zfd9hq58-curl-7.73.0.drv": ["dev"],
      "/nix/store/fn3kgnfzl5dzym26j8g907gq3kbm8bfh-unzip-6.0.drv": ["out"]
    }
    

    specifies that this derivation depends on the dev output of curl, and the out output of unzip.

  • system: The system type on which this derivation is to be built (e.g. x86_64-linux).

  • builder: The absolute path of the program to be executed to run the build. Typically this is the bash shell (e.g. /nix/store/r3j288vpmczbl500w6zz89gyfa4nr0b1-bash-4.4-p23/bin/bash).

  • args: The command-line arguments passed to the builder.

  • env: The environment passed to the builder.

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