This page is an overview of various functionality included in Nixpkgs, that is not directly related to building packages from source code.
pkgs.fetch*)Fetchers such as pkgs.fetchurl allow to download content such as package sources, by specifying an expected hash of the content.
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pkgs.runCommand*, pkgs.write*)Functions such as pkgs.runCommand or pkgs.writeShellScript are use-case specific wrappers around pkgs.stdenv with simple arguments.
Not to be confused with pkgs.writers.
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pkgs.writers)Data format or application focussed writers that transform Nix expressions into the respective format.
Not to be confused with pkgs.write*.
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pkgs.formats)Produce various config file formats from nix expressions.
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pkgs.mkShell)Convenience wrapper around mkDerivation for usage with nix-shell / nix develop.
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pkgs.makeSetupHook)Helper to produce hooks for the stdenv build phases.
(For more info on hooks in general, see Language/Framework Specific Builders in Nixpkgs#Hooks).
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pkgs.testers)Derivation builders for testing various properties of other derivations.
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fakeNssIncluding this derivation in, e.g. docker images or other environments without them, provides a simplistic set of user/group entries, to allow binaries expecting them to exist to work.
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buildFHSEnv)Wraps binaries that expect a FHS-compatible filesystem layout to run unpatched on NixOs.
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pkgs.appimageTools)A set of functions to run or extract AppImages.
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pkgs.dockerTools)A set of functions to create, modify, import or export docker images.
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pkgs.ociTools)A set of function to create OCI containers.
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pkgs.portableService)A function to create systemd’s Portable Services.
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make-disk-image.nix)This function creates disk images in various formats (e.g. raw, QCOW2 (QEMU), VDI (VirtualBox), etc.).
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pkgs.vmTools)Various tools to run derivations inside a Qemu/KVM backed virtual machine.
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pkgs.checkpointBuildTools)Resources:
pkgs.mkBinaryCache)Create Nix flat-file binary caches.
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