<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" version="5.0" xml:id="sec-running-nixos-tests-interactively"> <title>Running Tests</title> <para> You can run tests using <command>nix-build</command>. For example, to run the test <filename xlink:href="https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/tests/login.nix">login.nix</filename>, you just do: <screen> <prompt>$ </prompt>nix-build '<nixpkgs/nixos/tests/login.nix>' </screen> or, if you don’t want to rely on <envar>NIX_PATH</envar>: <screen> <prompt>$ </prompt>cd /my/nixpkgs/nixos/tests <prompt>$ </prompt>nix-build login.nix … running the VM test script machine: QEMU running (pid 8841) … 6 out of 6 tests succeeded </screen> 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 pretty-printed log of the test: <screen> <prompt>$ </prompt>firefox result/log.html </screen> </para> </section>