Configuring the Cloud Runner / Nx CLI

The Nx Cloud runner is configured in nx.json.

{
  "tasksRunnerOptions": {
    "default": {
      "runner": "@nrwl/nx-cloud",
      "options": {
        "accessToken": "SOMETOKEN",
        "cacheableOperations": ["build", "test", "lint", "e2e"]
      }
    }
  }
}

Cacheable Operations

Only operations listed in cacheableOperations can be cached using Nx Cloud and distributed using the distributed task execution (DTE). You can add new targets to that list.

Timeouts

By default, Nx Cloud requests will time out after 10 seconds. NX_CLOUD_NO_TIMEOUTS disables the timeout.

NX_CLOUD_NO_TIMEOUTS=true nx run-many --target=build --all

Logging

Setting NX_VERBOSE_LOGGING=true when running a command will emit a large amount of metadata It will print information about what artifacts are being downloaded and uploaded, as well as information about the hashes of every computation.

This can be useful for debugging unexpected cache misses, and issues with on-prem setups.

NX_VERBOSE_LOGGING=true will also print detailed information about distributed task execution, such as what commands were sent where, etc.

NX_VERBOSE_LOGGING is often enabled in CI globally while debugging your CI setups.

Access Tokens

NX_CLOUD_AUTH_TOKEN and NX_CLOUD_ACCESS_TOKEN are aliases of each other. This configuration allows you to override the access token set in nx.json. It is often enabled in CI to provide read-write privileges where only a read token is committed to the workspace's nx.json.

Enabling End-to-End Encryption

All communication with Nx Cloud’s API and cache is completed over HTTPS, but you can optionally enable e2e encryption by providing a secret key through nx.json or the NX_CLOUD_ENCRYPTION_KEY environment variable.

In nx.json, locate the taskRunnerOptions property. It will look something like this:

{
  "tasksRunnerOptions": {
    "default": {
      "runner": "@nrwl/nx-cloud",
      "options": {
        "accessToken": "SOMETOKEN",
        "cacheableOperations": ["build", "test", "lint", "e2e"],
        // Add the following property with your secret key
        "encryptionKey": "cheddar"
      }
    }
  }
}

Under the "options" property, you can add another property called encryptionKey. This is what will be used to encrypt your artifacts.

To instead use an environment variable to provide your secret key, run any Nx command as follows:

NX_CLOUD_ENCRYPTION_KEY=myEncryptionKey nx build my-project

This is an alternative to providing the encryption key through nx.json, but functionally it is identical.

Loading Env Variables From a File

If you create an env file called nx-cloud.env at the root of the workspace, the Nx Cloud runner is going to load NX_CLOUD_ENCRYPTION_KEY and NX_CLOUD_AUTH_TOKEN from it. The file is often added to .gitignore.