nix manipulate or query the Nix store nix --path -p --verbose -v operation options arguments The command nix provides access to the Nix store. This is the (set of) path(s) where Nix expressions and the file system objects built by them are stored. nix has many subcommands called operations. These are individually documented below. Exactly one operation must always be provided. In this section the options that are common to all Nix operations are listed. These options are allowed for every subcommand (although they may not always have an effect). --path Indicates that any identifier arguments to the operation are paths in the store rather than identifiers. --verbose 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 and specified below in the respective sections. 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 Print error messages only. 1 Print informational messages. 2 Print even more informational messages. 3 Print messages that should only be useful for debugging. 4 Vomit mode: print vast amounts of debug information. nix --install -i ids The operation --install realises the Nix expressions identified by ids in the file system. If these expressions are derivation expressions, they are first normalised. That is, their target paths are are built, unless a normal form is already known. The identifiers of the normal forms of the given Nix expressions are printed on standard output. nix --delete -d paths The operation --delete unconditionally deletes the paths paths from the Nix store. It is an error to attempt to delete paths outside of the store. This operation should almost never be called directly, since no attempt is made to verify that no references exist to the paths to be deleted. Therefore, careless deletion can result in an inconsistent system. Deletion of paths in the store is done by the garbage collector (which uses --delete to delete unreferenced paths).