Environment variables

Configuration

Environment variables can be set with environment.variables , environment.sessionVariables , and environment.profileRelativeSessionVariables . environment.variables are global variables set on shell initialization, whereas environment.sessionVariables and environment.profileRelativeSessionVariables are initialized through PAM.

For example, for the XDG Base Directory Specification, the following could be set to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix:

{
  # ...
  
  # This is using a rec (recursive) expression to set and access XDG_BIN_HOME within the expression
  # For more on rec expressions see https://nix.dev/tutorials/first-steps/nix-language#recursive-attribute-set-rec
  environment.sessionVariables = rec {
    XDG_CACHE_HOME  = "$HOME/.cache";
    XDG_CONFIG_HOME = "$HOME/.config";
    XDG_DATA_HOME   = "$HOME/.local/share";
    XDG_STATE_HOME  = "$HOME/.local/state";

    # Not officially in the specification
    XDG_BIN_HOME    = "$HOME/.local/bin";
    PATH = [ 
      "${XDG_BIN_HOME}"
    ];
  };

 # ...
}

Note: Setting sessionVariables will do that for all users. This can break nix commands such as nix store or nix copy. They will fail to find ssh binary with nixos filesystem error: status: Permission denied [/.local/bin/ssh]

Troubleshooting

pam_env(sudo:session): Expandable variables must be wrapped in {} <$VARIABLE/path/to>

Error logs may be found with journalctl -xb -p3 regarding the no presence of curly braces {} for variable expansion.

sudo[3424]: pam_env(sudo:session): Expandable variables must be wrapped in {} <$VARIABLE/path/to> - ignoring

While checking the configuration values, for instance with nixos-option environment.sessionVariables, it might be found that Nix is correctly parsing the curly braces.

Value:
{
  ...
  VARIABLE = "${VARIABLE}/path/to";
  ...
}

This indicates that the curly braces are getting removed at a later stage.

Solution or workaround

Unknown.

nix-build sandbox

Compared to a normal shell environment, in a nix-build sandbox, Nix will set some environment variables, for example:

NIX_BINTOOLS=/nix/store/lvg99f3zni6zw4cvlci6wpmzlls0nsn4-binutils-wrapper-2.38
NIX_BINTOOLS_WRAPPER_TARGET_HOST_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu=1
NIX_BUILD_CORES=3
NIX_BUILD_TOP=/build
NIX_CC=/nix/store/61zfi5pmhb0d91422f186x26v7b52y5k-gcc-wrapper-11.3.0
NIX_CC_WRAPPER_TARGET_HOST_x86_64_unknown_linux_gnu=1
NIX_CFLAGS_COMPILE= -frandom-seed=8cnrgjjflj
NIX_ENFORCE_NO_NATIVE=1
NIX_ENFORCE_PURITY=1
NIX_HARDENING_ENABLE=fortify stackprotector pic strictoverflow format relro bindnow
NIX_INDENT_MAKE=1
NIX_LDFLAGS=-rpath /nix/store/8cnrgjjflj3dyppz299w50l9yydgnqkp-x/lib64 -rpath /nix/store/8cnrgjjflj3dyppz299w50l9yydgnqkp-x/lib 
NIX_LOG_FD=2
NIX_SSL_CERT_FILE=/no-cert-file.crt
NIX_STORE=/nix/store