@@ 4156,6 4156,15 @@ package definition.
When importing a GNU package, the synopsis and descriptions are replaced
by their canonical upstream variant.
+Usually, you will first need to do:
+
+@example
+export NIX_REMOTE=daemon
+@end example
+
+@noindent
+so that @command{nix-instantiate} does not try to open the Nix database.
+
As an example, the command below imports the package definition of
LibreOffice (more precisely, it imports the definition of the package
bound to the @code{libreoffice} top-level attribute):