lix/doc/manual/src/command-ref/nix-env/opt-common.md
Alexander Bantyev 36b059748d Split nix-env and nix-store documentation per-subcommand
Documentation on "classic" commands with many sub-commands are
notoriously hard to discover due to lack of overview and anchor links.
Additionally the information on common options and environment variables
is not accessible offline in man pages, and therefore often overlooked
by readers.

With this change, each sub-command of nix-store and nix-env gets its
own page in the manual (listed in the table of contents), and each own
man page.

Also, man pages for each subcommand now (again) list common options
and environment variables. While this makes each page quite long and
some common parameters don't apply, this should still make it easier
to navigate as that additional information was not accessible on the
command line at all.

It is now possible to run 'nix-store --<subcommand> --help` to display
help pages for the given subcommand.

Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
2023-03-30 09:46:28 +02:00

1.6 KiB

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:// or https://, 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 named default.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 cause nix-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.