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Running Tests
You can run tests using nix-build. For example, to run the test
login.nix,
you do:
$ cd /my/git/clone/of/nixpkgs
$ nix-build -A nixosTests.login
After building/downloading all required dependencies, this will perform a build that starts a QEMU/KVM virtual machine containing a NixOS system. The virtual machine mounts the Nix store of the host; this makes VM creation very fast, as no disk image needs to be created. Afterwards, you can view a log of the test:
$ nix-store --read-log result
System Requirements
NixOS tests require virtualization support.
This means that the machine must have kvm in its system features list, or apple-virt in case of macOS.
These features are autodetected locally, but apple-virt is only autodetected since Nix 2.19.0.
Features of remote builders must additionally be configured manually on the client, e.g. on NixOS with nix.buildMachines.*.supportedFeatures or through general Nix configuration.
If you run the tests on a macOS machine, you also need a "remote" builder for Linux; possibly a VM. nix-darwin users may enable nix.linux-builder.enable to launch such a VM.