I am struggling to install nix on a mac with m1. I have checked out all the related issues, but I am not sure what to do to install properly as an end-user
These are the issues:
How can I install nix on a M1 mac?
I’ve been looking for information on the same topic.
The conclusion so far is that it’s not supported. See supported platforms in the manual:
Maybe possible to use it as x86_64 with Rosetta though? But that seems hugely inefficient since it presumably forces all installed software to also run as x86_64. Happy to hear counter-arguments though 
There’s nixpkgs support for aarch64-darwin now. The issues is how to get a version of nix which is compatible with aarch64-darwin.
Luckily, the 2.3.13 release of nix also updated the installer script to include a proper fix to the install script. https://releases.nixos.org/nix/nix-2.3.13/install
You should be able to curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh yourself into nix on M1 now. (not sure if the /nix mount is still an issue, don’t own an M1)
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The mount issue was ~fixed in master via nix#4289, but the changes haven’t been backported to 2.3.x.
At the time, I didn’t really anticipate how far off the next release from master would be–and other/overlapping unreleased work in master adds some friction to backporting it. (If someone wants to try, I outlined likely steps in https://github.com/NixOS/nix/pull/4289#issuecomment-842797556)
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you can build nix from sources, create a mountpoint /nix by self.
./configure --prefix=/nix --with-boost=$HOME/.me
✿ file /nix/bin/nix ─╯
/nix/bin/nix: Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64
if package support aarch64-darwin, install successful:
✿ file /nix/store/blcjz4b5fjkxlwx5rpzsgq398gf9lgf1-rustc-1.52.1/bin/rustc ─╯
/nix/store/blcjz4b5fjkxlwx5rpzsgq398gf9lgf1-rustc-1.52.1/bin/rustc: Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64
if not support aarch64-darwin:
error: Package ‘ghc-8.10.4’ in /nix/store/m62zfwzwss5bap5ly32w5rmnncypfjd5-nixpkgs/nixpkgs/pkgs/development/compilers/ghc/8.10.4.nix:267 is not supported on ‘aarch64-darwin’, refusing to evaluate.
use export NIXPKGS_ALLOW_UNSUPPORTED_SYSTEM=1 still not work
error: cannot bootstrap GHC on this platform
(use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
i hope nix will can install only support x86_64 package with Rosetta
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I can confirm Nix 2.3.15 can be properly installed on aarch64-darwin simply following the manual’s instructions: Introduction
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What if you already have nix installed but are on macOS? It doesn’t seem to be explicitly covered by the instructions there.
The release candidate is available in nixpkgs-unstable as nix_2_4. As long as you have access to nixpkgs-unstable somehow (channels, flake, etc), you can install it into your environment with nix-env or set nix.packages to nix_2_4 if you’re using nix-darwin.
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System:
OS: macOS 12.3
CPU: (8) arm64 Apple M1
Memory: 1.45 GB / 8.00 GB
Shell: 5.8 - /bin/zsh
Binaries:
Node: 16.13.0 - ~/.nvm/versions/node/v16.13.0/bin/node
Yarn: 1.22.15 - /opt/homebrew/bin/yarn
npm: 8.5.2 - /opt/homebrew/bin/npm
- I installed nix via - $ sh <(curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install)
- The install seemed to be successful.
- I closed my terminal and reopened to make sure I was in a new session and when I typed
nix-envI receivedzsh: command not found: nix-env - I look in my home directory and i do not see any nix sym links
- I see that nix is not in my $PATH
- I do see that nix has been installed in my root and I can cd into
cd /nix/var/nix/profiles/default/etc/profile.d
I thought after the install appeared to be successful I could just use nix but this does not seem to be the case. How can I add nix to my path so I can start using the nix-env command?
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You probably want to add /Users/$USER/.nix-profile/bin:/nix/var/nix/profiles/default/bin to your PATH.
The installer presumably added nix to your /etc/bashrc and /etc/zshrc, but something already in your profile scripts either prevents it from running, or overwrites the PATH after it does.
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This was my experience as well. I had to manually include the appropriate directories in my PATH environment variable.