Packaging/Quirks and Caveats
A good start for packaging your first piece if software is the Quickstart Chapter in the nixpkgs manual Also see the Generic Algorithm on doing Packaging
Build software with Autotools
Add autoreconfHook to buildInputs to automatically build software which uses automake and autoconf:
buildInputs = [ ... autoreconfHook ];
Examples in nixpkgs: * samplicator
Package simple python scripts
For scripts like a single Python file, it is not necessary to specify src in mkDerivation. When you want to use buildPythonPackage the sources need to provide a setup.py file which also is overkill for a lot of projects. The default mkDerivation will attempt to unpack your source code. This can be prevented that by applying unpackPhase = ":"; (: is a no-op in shell scripts).
myscript-package = pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation {
name = "myscript";
buildInputs = [
(pkgs.python36.withPackages (pythonPackages: with pythonPackages; [
consul
six
requests
]))
];
unpackPhase = ":";
installPhase = "install -m755 -D ${./myscript.py} $out/bin/myscript";
};
nix will automatically replace shebangs, for ex. #!/usr/bin/env python3 with dependencies given in buildInputs. As the derivation got pkgs.python36.withPackages (...) in buildInputs, it will create a virtualenv-like python wrapper. The python wrapper will have all specified dependencies and will be used to call the script.
In NixOS, the package can be put into environment.systemPackages, and myscript will be available as a global command.
Source: nh2 @ StackOverflow
A more lightweight alternative is to use nix-shell in the shebang line as described in this gist
Caveats
After packaging software and successfully generating an executable some functions of the package might still not work. This is a collection of error and how to fix them:
Fixed by adding wrapGAppsHook to buildInputs:
buildInputs = [ ... wrapGAppsHook ];
Sample PR in nixpkgs:
For packaged python libs: ImportError: libstdc++.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file
Solution: According to the IRC, add ${stdenv.cc.cc.lib}/lib/libstdc++.so.6 to the search path.