nixpkgs-suyu/nixos/doc/manual/configuration/adding-custom-packages.xml
Mikey Ariel a099ca4505 Chunk NixOS manual
[Squashed commits to make git blame etc. more likely to work. -ED]
2014-08-26 19:03:49 +02:00

84 lines
2.4 KiB
XML
Raw Blame History

This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters

This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.

<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
version="5.0"
xml:id="sec-custom-packages">
<title>Adding Custom Packages</title>
<para>Its possible that a package you need is not available in NixOS.
In that case, you can do two things. First, you can clone the Nixpkgs
repository, add the package to your clone, and (optionally) submit a
patch or pull request to have it accepted into the main Nixpkgs
repository. This is described in detail in the <link
xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/manual">Nixpkgs manual</link>.
In short, you clone Nixpkgs:
<screen>
$ git clone git://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs.git
$ cd nixpkgs
</screen>
Then you write and test the package as described in the Nixpkgs
manual. Finally, you add it to
<literal>environment.systemPackages</literal>, e.g.
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.my-package ];
</programlisting>
and you run <command>nixos-rebuild</command>, specifying your own
Nixpkgs tree:
<screen>
$ nixos-rebuild switch -I nixpkgs=/path/to/my/nixpkgs</screen>
</para>
<para>The second possibility is to add the package outside of the
Nixpkgs tree. For instance, here is how you specify a build of the
<link xlink:href="http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/">GNU Hello</link>
package directly in <filename>configuration.nix</filename>:
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages =
let
my-hello = with pkgs; stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
name = "hello-2.8";
src = fetchurl {
url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
sha256 = "0wqd8sjmxfskrflaxywc7gqw7sfawrfvdxd9skxawzfgyy0pzdz6";
};
};
in
[ my-hello ];
</programlisting>
Of course, you can also move the definition of
<literal>my-hello</literal> into a separate Nix expression, e.g.
<programlisting>
environment.systemPackages = [ (import ./my-hello.nix) ];
</programlisting>
where <filename>my-hello.nix</filename> contains:
<programlisting>
with import &lt;nixpkgs> {}; # bring all of Nixpkgs into scope
stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
name = "hello-2.8";
src = fetchurl {
url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
sha256 = "0wqd8sjmxfskrflaxywc7gqw7sfawrfvdxd9skxawzfgyy0pzdz6";
};
}
</programlisting>
This allows testing the package easily:
<screen>
$ nix-build my-hello.nix
$ ./result/bin/hello
Hello, world!
</screen>
</para>
</section>