nixpkgs/doc/stdenv
Jade Lovelace 0504bc63e4
doc/stdenv: rewrite manual build procedure to be closer to an auto-build (#262137)
* doc/stdenv: rewrite manual build procedure to be closer to an auto-build

This is based on
<https://jade.fyi/blog/building-nix-derivations-manually/> plus some
more original research.

The previous version of this section did not work for your choice of
simple Haskell package, e.g. haskellPackages.hscolour, due to things
like `compileBuildDriverPhase` and other custom phases that it
does not address at all.

It seems more correct to use genericBuild in development to harmonize it
with what is actually done.

I feel a little bit like I am committing a sin by suggesting using the
experimental CLI in the manual (afaict I am the first to do this), but I
have given the old version of the command, and there are justifiable
reasons to do it:
* The noted limitations with env-vars are fixed. The one with the
  non-empty temp directory was one I ran into myself and oh boy was that
  not fun to debug.
* Additionally the outputs are set *before* sourcing `setup.sh`: there
  is an issue with nix-shell where the original version of `$out` winds
  up in `NIX_LDFLAGS` due to _addRpathPrefix, which means that resulting
  executables may not run properly.

It is sad that `nix develop` propagates a wrong value of `SHELL` to
builders, though. It is equally sad that `nix-shell` is essentially
abandoned upstream, with undocumented and not insignificant differences
from `nix develop`.

For the exact script differences:
17e6b85d05/src/nix-build/nix-build.cc (L516-L551)
db026103b1/src/nix/get-env.sh

Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
2023-10-23 01:53:23 +02:00
..
cross-compilation.chapter.md
meta.chapter.md doc: link, instead of just mentioning, Nix manual (#255126) 2023-09-14 17:09:39 +02:00
multiple-output.chapter.md remove the misleading warning on using nix-env for split outputs (#255947) 2023-09-25 16:23:01 +02:00
platform-notes.chapter.md
stdenv.chapter.md doc/stdenv: rewrite manual build procedure to be closer to an auto-build (#262137) 2023-10-23 01:53:23 +02:00