nix-shell "argument list too long"

[jedahu]

Running into this issue (NixOS/nixpkgs#19581) when building a node package as a dependency of another derivation using nix-shell.

E.g.

mkDerivation {
  name = "foo-env";
  shellHook = ''
    ${some-node-package-with-a-million-dependencies}/bin/bar
  '';
}

$ nix-shell
Can't exec "/nix/store/<hash>-nix-1.11.16/bin/nix-store": Argument
list too long at ~/.nix-profile/bin/nix-shell line 270.

Is there a known workaround?

[sebastianblunt]

When I ran into this it was because the compositionScript was being inherited and thus being inserted into the environment as an environment variable, and its size grows with the number of dependencies. Unsetting nodePackages.package.compositionScript resolved the error for me.