title: pkgs.mkShell author: zimbatm date: 2017-10-30#

mkShell#

pkgs.mkShell is a special kind of derivation that is only useful when using it combined with nix-shell. It will in fact fail to instantiate when invoked with nix-build.

Usage#

{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:
pkgs.mkShell {
  # this will make all the build inputs from hello and gnutar available to the shell environment
  inputsFrom = with pkgs; [ hello gnutar ];
  buildInputs = [ pkgs.gnumake ];
}