Nix derivations
Derivations are recipes for the Nix build daemon how to build the package. At a glance, this is the equivalent to manifests from Flatpak packages or Guix packages.
The following code block shows what a derivation looks like.
nix show-derivation nixpkgs#hello
{
"/nix/store/vvb4wxmnjixmrkhmj2xb75z62hrr41i7-hello-2.10.drv": {
"outputs": {
"out": {
"path": "/nix/store/xcp9cav49dmsjbwdjlmkjxj10gkpx553-hello-2.10"
}
},
"inputSrcs": [
"/nix/store/9krlzvny65gdc8s7kpb6lkx8cd02c25b-default-builder.sh"
],
"inputDrvs": {
"/nix/store/127p1886lb1q7x02wyy77ib9ghhc324v-hello-2.10.tar.gz.drv": [
"out"
],
"/nix/store/4lzwc3wzbqjq973psxkph8jjq4g6cssr-stdenv-linux.drv": [
"out"
],
"/nix/store/js6ib8zv84knb7kwnjdrqgwf86djjblk-bash-5.1-p12.drv": [
"out"
]
},
"system": "x86_64-linux",
"builder": "/nix/store/a54wrar1jym1d8yvlijq0l2gghmy8szz-bash-5.1-p12/bin/bash",
"args": [
"-e",
"/nix/store/9krlzvny65gdc8s7kpb6lkx8cd02c25b-default-builder.sh"
],
"env": {
"buildInputs": "",
"builder": "/nix/store/a54wrar1jym1d8yvlijq0l2gghmy8szz-bash-5.1-p12/bin/bash",
"configureFlags": "",
"depsBuildBuild": "",
"depsBuildBuildPropagated": "",
"depsBuildTarget": "",
"depsBuildTargetPropagated": "",
"depsHostHost": "",
"depsHostHostPropagated": "",
"depsTargetTarget": "",
"depsTargetTargetPropagated": "",
"doCheck": "1",
"doInstallCheck": "",
"name": "hello-2.10",
"nativeBuildInputs": "",
"out": "/nix/store/xcp9cav49dmsjbwdjlmkjxj10gkpx553-hello-2.10",
"outputs": "out",
"patches": "",
"pname": "hello",
"propagatedBuildInputs": "",
"propagatedNativeBuildInputs": "",
"src": "/nix/store/3x7dwzq014bblazs7kq20p9hyzz0qh8g-hello-2.10.tar.gz",
"stdenv": "/nix/store/xcmlbsqabmckx42p8w18ri5zq8v2iiav-stdenv-linux",
"strictDeps": "",
"system": "x86_64-linux",
"version": "2.10"
}
}
}
While we can create derivations with the derivations builtin from the Nix language, in practice you'll use stdenv.mkDerivation from nixpkgs standard library.
nixpkgs also comes with several convenient functions/environments for several programming languages and frameworks including Python, Rust, Go, and Nim
it also includes environments for common setups such as for clang compiler