building the node using nix

Building Cardano Node with nix

The Nix Package Manager can be installed on most Linux distributions by downloading and running the installation script:

curl -L https://nixos.org/nix/install > install-nix.sh
chmod +x install-nix.sh
./install-nix.sh

and following the directions.

Then the Flake feature of nix (and IFD support) should be enabled:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/nix
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/nix/nix.conf
experimental-features = nix-command flakes
allow-import-from-derivation = true
EOF

IOHK Binary Cache

To improve build speed, it is possible to set up a binary cache maintained by IOHK (this is optional):

sudo mkdir -p /etc/nix
cat <<EOF | sudo tee -a /etc/nix/nix.conf
substituters = https://cache.nixos.org https://cache.iog.io
trusted-public-keys = hydra.iohk.io:f/Ea+s+dFdN+3Y/G+FDgSq+a5NEWhJGzdjvKNGv0/EQ= cache.nixos.org-1:6NCHdD59X431o0gWypbMrAURkbJ16ZPMQFGspcDShjY=
EOF

Building and running with nix

Once Nix is installed, log out and then log back in. After that you can build the full node package with Mainnet configuration as follows:

git clone https://github.com/intersectmbo/cardano-node
cd cardano-node
nix build .#mainnet/node -o mainnet-node-local
./mainnet-node-local/bin/cardano-node-mainnet

or run in in one go:

nix run github:intersectmbo/cardano-node#mainnet/node

If you only want to build just the cardano-node executable, without the configuration bundle:

nix build .#cardano-node -o cardano-node-build

To build the cardano-cli executable, follow the steps below:

nix build .#cardano-cli -o cardano-cli-build
./cardano-cli-build/bin/cardano-cli

Or run directly, eg.:

nix run .#cardano-cli -- version

Development environments

A shell environment with pre-compiled, cached, cabal dependencies is available with:

nix develop

An environment with dependencies compiled with profiling enabled is available with:

nix develop .#profiled