Since you'll be using the installer to install Nix on systems without Nix, the default build is a static binary. This guide shows you how to build the installer on Linux and macOS.
To build a portable Linux binary on a system with Nix:
# to build a local copy
nix build -L ".#nix-installer-static"
# to build the remote main development branch
nix build -L "github:determinatesystems/nix-installer#nix-installer-static"
# for a specific version of the installer:
export NIX_INSTALLER_TAG="v0.6.0"
nix build -L "github:determinatesystems/nix-installer/$NIX_INSTALLER_TAG#nix-installer-static"# to build a local copy
nix build -L ".#nix-installer"
# to build the remote main development branch
nix build -L "github:determinatesystems/nix-installer#nix-installer"
# for a specific version of the installer:
export NIX_INSTALLER_TAG="v0.6.0"
nix build -L "github:determinatesystems/nix-installer/$NIX_INSTALLER_TAG#nix-installer"Once Nix has built the executable for the desired system, you can copy result/bin/nix-installer to the machine you wish to run it on (in Nix, result is a symlink to a directory in the Nix store).
You can also add the installer to a system without Nix using cargo, as there are no system dependencies to worry about:
# to build and run a local copy
RUSTFLAGS="--cfg tokio_unstable" cargo run -- --help
# to build the remote main development branch
RUSTFLAGS="--cfg tokio_unstable" cargo install --git https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/nix-installer
nix-installer --help
# for a specific version of the installer:
export NIX_INSTALLER_TAG="v0.6.0"
RUSTFLAGS="--cfg tokio_unstable" cargo install --git https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/nix-installer --tag $NIX_INSTALLER_TAG
nix-installer --helpTo make this build portable, pass the --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl option.
Note
We currently require --cfg tokio_unstable as we utilize Tokio's process groups, which wrap stable std APIs, but are unstable due to it requiring an MSRV bump.