Based on the Determinate Nix Installer, responsible for over tens of thousands of Nix installs daily. The fast, friendly, and reliable GitHub Action to install Nix with Flakes.
- ✅ Accelerated KVM on open source projects and larger runners. See GitHub's announcement for more info.
- ✅ Linux, x86_64, aarch64, and i686
- ✅ macOS, x86_64 and aarch64
- ✅ WSL2, x86_64 and aarch64
- ✅ Containers
- ✅ Valve's SteamOS
- ✅ GitHub Enterprise Server
- ✅ GitHub Hosted, self-hosted, and long running Actions Runners
on:
pull_request:
push:
branches: [main]
jobs:
lints:
name: Build
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- uses: DeterminateSystems/nix-installer-action@main
- run: nix build .
To fetch private flakes from FlakeHub, update the permissions
block and pass flakehub: true
:
on:
pull_request:
push:
branches: [main]
jobs:
lints:
name: Build
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
permissions:
id-token: "write"
contents: "read"
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- uses: DeterminateSystems/nix-installer-action@main
with:
flakehub: true
- run: nix build .
See .github/workflows/ci.yml
for a full example.
- If KVM is available, the installer sets up KVM so that Nix can use it ,and exports the
DETERMINATE_NIX_KVM
environment variable set to 1. If KVM is not available,DETERMINATE_NIX_KVM
is set to 0. This can be used in combination with GitHub Actions'if
syntax for turning on and off steps.
Differing from the upstream Nix installer scripts:
- In
nix.conf
:- the
nix-command
andflakes
features are enabled bash-prompt-prefix
is setauto-optimise-store
is set totrue
(On Linux only)
extra-nix-path
is set tonixpkgs=flake:nixpkgs
max-jobs
is set toauto
- the
- KVM is enabled by default.
- an installation receipt (for uninstalling) is stored at
/nix/receipt.json
as well as a copy of the install binary at/nix/nix-installer
nix-channel --update
is not run,~/.nix-channels
is not provisionedssl-cert-file
is set in/etc/nix/nix.conf
if thessl-cert-file
argument is used.
Parameter | Description | Type | Default |
---|---|---|---|
backtrace |
The setting for RUST_BACKTRACE |
string | |
extra-args |
Extra arguments to pass to the planner (prefer using structured with: arguments unless using a custom planner!) |
string | |
extra-conf |
Extra configuration lines for /etc/nix/nix.conf (includes access-tokens with secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN automatically if github-token is set) |
string | |
flakehub |
Log in to FlakeHub to pull private flakes using the GitHub Actions JSON Web Token (JWT), which is bound to the api.flakehub.com audience. |
Boolean | false |
force-docker-shim |
Force the use of Docker as a process supervisor. This setting is automatically enabled when necessary. | Boolean | false |
github-token |
A GitHub token for making authenticated requests (which have a higher rate-limit quota than unauthenticated requests) | string | ${{ github.token }} |
github-server-url |
The URL for the GitHub server, to use with the github-token token. Defaults to the current GitHub server, supporting GitHub Enterprise Server automatically. Only change this value if the provided github-token is for a different GitHub server than the current server. |
string | ${{ github.server }} |
init |
The init system to configure (requires planner: linux-multi ) |
enum (none or systemd ) |
|
kvm |
Automatically configure the GitHub Actions Runner for NixOS test support, if the host supports it. | Boolean | true |
local-root |
A local nix-installer binary root. Overrides the nix-installer-url setting (a nix-installer.sh should exist, binaries should be named nix-installer-$ARCH , eg. nix-installer-x86_64-linux ). |
Boolean | false |
log-directives |
A list of tracing directives, comma separated with - s replaced with _ (eg. nix_installer=trace ) |
string | |
logger |
The logger to use during installation | enum (pretty , json , full , compact ) |
|
mac-case-sensitive |
Use a case-sensitive volume (planner: macos only) |
Boolean | false |
mac-encrypt |
Force encryption on the volume (planner: macos only) |
Boolean | false |
mac-root-disk |
The root disk of the target (planner: macos only) |
string | |
mac-volume-label |
The label for the created APFS volume (planner: macos only) |
string | |
modify-profile |
Modify the user profile to automatically load Nix | Boolean | false |
nix-build-group-id |
The Nix build group GID | integer | |
nix-build-group-name |
The Nix build group name | string | |
nix-build-user-base |
The Nix build user base UID (ascending) | integer | |
nix-build-user-count |
The number of build users to create | integer | 32 |
nix-build-user-prefix |
The Nix build user prefix (user numbers will be postfixed) | string | |
source-branch |
The branch of nix-installer to use (conflicts with the source-tag , source-revision , and source-branch ) |
string | |
source-pr |
The pull request of nix-installer to use (conflicts with source-tag , source-revision , and source-branch ) |
integer | |
source-revision |
The revision of nix-installer to use (conflicts with source-tag , source-branch , and source-pr ) |
string | |
source-tag |
The tag of nix-installer to use (conflicts with source-revision , source-branch , source-pr ) |
string | |
source-url |
A URL pointing to the nix-installer binary |
URL | n/a (calculated) |
nix-package-url |
The Nix package URL | URL | |
planner |
The installation planner to use | enum (linux or macos ) |
|
reinstall |
Force a reinstall if an existing installation is detected (consider backing up /nix/store ) |
Boolean | false |
start-daemon |
If the daemon should be started, requires planner: linux-multi |
Boolean | false |
trust-runner-user |
Whether to make the runner user trusted by the Nix daemon | Boolean | true |
diagnostic-endpoint |
Diagnostic endpoint url where the installer sends install diagnostic reports to, to disable set this to an empty string | string | https://install.determinate.systems/nix-installer/diagnostic |
proxy |
The proxy to use (if any), valid proxy bases are https://$URL , https://$URL and socks5:https://$URL |
string | |
ssl-cert-file |
An SSL cert to use (if any), used for fetching Nix and sets NIX_SSL_CERT_FILE for Nix |
string |