pyrox.dev
1<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
2 xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
3 xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
4 version="5.0"
5 xml:id="sec-custom-packages">
6 <title>Adding Custom Packages</title>
7
8 <para>
9 It’s possible that a package you need is not available in NixOS. In that
10 case, you can do two things. First, you can clone the Nixpkgs repository, add
11 the package to your clone, and (optionally) submit a patch or pull request to
12 have it accepted into the main Nixpkgs repository. This is described in
13 detail in the <link
14xlink:href="http://nixos.org/nixpkgs/manual">Nixpkgs
15 manual</link>. In short, you clone Nixpkgs:
16<screen>
17$ git clone https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs
18$ cd nixpkgs
19</screen>
20 Then you write and test the package as described in the Nixpkgs manual.
21 Finally, you add it to <literal>environment.systemPackages</literal>, e.g.
22<programlisting>
23<xref linkend="opt-environment.systemPackages"/> = [ pkgs.my-package ];
24</programlisting>
25 and you run <command>nixos-rebuild</command>, specifying your own Nixpkgs
26 tree:
27<screen>
28# nixos-rebuild switch -I nixpkgs=/path/to/my/nixpkgs</screen>
29 </para>
30
31 <para>
32 The second possibility is to add the package outside of the Nixpkgs tree. For
33 instance, here is how you specify a build of the
34 <link xlink:href="http://www.gnu.org/software/hello/">GNU Hello</link>
35 package directly in <filename>configuration.nix</filename>:
36<programlisting>
37<xref linkend="opt-environment.systemPackages"/> =
38 let
39 my-hello = with pkgs; stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
40 name = "hello-2.8";
41 src = fetchurl {
42 url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
43 sha256 = "0wqd8sjmxfskrflaxywc7gqw7sfawrfvdxd9skxawzfgyy0pzdz6";
44 };
45 };
46 in
47 [ my-hello ];
48</programlisting>
49 Of course, you can also move the definition of <literal>my-hello</literal>
50 into a separate Nix expression, e.g.
51<programlisting>
52<xref linkend="opt-environment.systemPackages"/> = [ (import ./my-hello.nix) ];
53</programlisting>
54 where <filename>my-hello.nix</filename> contains:
55<programlisting>
56with import <nixpkgs> {}; # bring all of Nixpkgs into scope
57
58stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
59 name = "hello-2.8";
60 src = fetchurl {
61 url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
62 sha256 = "0wqd8sjmxfskrflaxywc7gqw7sfawrfvdxd9skxawzfgyy0pzdz6";
63 };
64}
65</programlisting>
66 This allows testing the package easily:
67<screen>
68$ nix-build my-hello.nix
69$ ./result/bin/hello
70Hello, world!
71</screen>
72 </para>
73</section>