diff --git a/pkgs/build-support/docker/default.nix b/pkgs/build-support/docker/default.nix
index 2d6d6c1fc91d8..59e0ce71c7222 100644
--- a/pkgs/build-support/docker/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/build-support/docker/default.nix
@@ -23,6 +23,7 @@
   referencesByPopularity,
   writeScript,
   writeText,
+  closureInfo,
 }:
 
 # WARNING: this API is unstable and may be subject to backwards-incompatible changes in the future.
@@ -261,18 +262,11 @@ rec {
       ${text}
     '';
 
-  nixRegistration = contents: runCommand "nix-registration" {
-    buildInputs = [ nix perl ];
-    # For obtaining the closure of `contents'.
-    exportReferencesGraph =
-      let contentsList = if builtins.isList contents then contents else [ contents ];
-      in map (x: [("closure-" + baseNameOf x) x]) contentsList;
-    }
-    ''
-      mkdir $out
-      printRegistration=1 perl ${pkgs.pathsFromGraph} closure-* > $out/db.dump
-      perl ${pkgs.pathsFromGraph} closure-* > $out/storePaths
-    '';
+  nixRegistration = contents:
+    let
+      rootPaths = if builtins.isList contents then contents else [ contents ];
+    in
+      closureInfo { inherit rootPaths; };
 
   # Create $maxLayers worth of Docker Layers, one layer per store path
   # unless there are more paths than $maxLayers. In that case, create
@@ -795,6 +789,9 @@ rec {
   # the container.
   # Be careful since this doesn't work well with multilayer.
   buildImageWithNixDb = args@{ contents ? null, extraCommands ? "", ... }:
+    let
+      registrationInfo = nixRegistration contents;
+    in
     buildImage (args // {
       extraCommands = ''
         echo "Generating the nix database..."
@@ -803,7 +800,7 @@ rec {
         echo "         be better to only have one layer that contains a nix store."
         # This requires Nix 1.12 or higher
         export NIX_REMOTE=local?root=$PWD
-        ${nix}/bin/nix-store --load-db < ${nixRegistration contents}/db.dump
+        ${nix}/bin/nix-store --load-db < ${registrationInfo}/registration
 
         # We fill the store in order to run the 'verify' command that
         # generates hash and size of output paths.
@@ -811,7 +808,7 @@ rec {
         # generated by the exportReferencesGraph function will
         # contains sha and size. See
         # https://github.com/NixOS/nix/commit/c2b0d8749f7e77afc1c4b3e8dd36b7ee9720af4a
-        storePaths=$(cat ${nixRegistration contents}/storePaths)
+        storePaths=$(cat ${registrationInfo}/store-paths)
         echo "Copying everything to /nix/store (will take a while)..."
         cp -prd $storePaths nix/store/
         ${nix}/bin/nix-store --verify --check-contents