Building Nix from Source

After cloning Nix's Git repository, issue the following commands:

$ ./bootstrap.sh
$ ./configure options...
$ make
$ make install

Nix requires GNU Make so you may need to invoke gmake instead.

The installation path can be specified by passing the --prefix=prefix to configure. The default installation directory is /usr/local. You can change this to any location you like. You must have write permission to the prefix path.

Nix keeps its store (the place where packages are stored) in /nix/store by default. This can be changed using --with-store-dir=path.

Warning

It is best not to change the Nix store from its default, since doing so makes it impossible to use pre-built binaries from the standard Nixpkgs channels — that is, all packages will need to be built from source.

Nix keeps state (such as its database and log files) in /nix/var by default. This can be changed using --localstatedir=path.