nix-shell

Start an interactive shell based on a Nix expression.

Start with nix expression in shell.nix or default.nix in the current directory

$ nix-shell

Run shell command in non-interactive shell and exit

$ nix-shell --run "[command] [arg1 arg2 ...]"

Start with expression in default.nix in the current directory

$ nix-shell [default.nix]

Start with packages loaded from nixpkgs

$ nix-shell --packages [package_name_1 package_name_2 ...]

Start with packages loaded from specific nixpkgs revision

$ nix-shell --packages [package_name_1 package_name_2 ...] -I nixpkgs=[https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/nixpkgs_revision.tar.gz]

Evaluate rest of file in specific interpreter, for use in #!-scripts (see )

$ nix-shell -i [interpreter] --packages [package_name_1 package_name_2 ...]