Customising Packages

Some packages in Nixpkgs have options to enable or disable optional functionality or change other aspects of the package.

::: {.warning} Unfortunately, Nixpkgs currently lacks a way to query available configuration options. :::

::: {.note} For example, many packages come with extensions one might add. Examples include:

You can use them like this:

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  sl
  (pass.withExtensions (subpkgs: with subpkgs; [
    pass-audit
    pass-otp
    pass-genphrase
  ]))
  (python3.withPackages (subpkgs: with subpkgs; [
      requests
  ]))
  cowsay
];

:::

Apart from high-level options, it's possible to tweak a package in almost arbitrary ways, such as changing or disabling dependencies of a package. For instance, the Emacs package in Nixpkgs by default has a dependency on GTK 2. If you want to build it against GTK 3, you can specify that as follows:

environment.systemPackages = [ (pkgs.emacs.override { gtk = pkgs.gtk3; }) ];

The function override performs the call to the Nix function that produces Emacs, with the original arguments amended by the set of arguments specified by you. So here the function argument gtk gets the value pkgs.gtk3, causing Emacs to depend on GTK 3. (The parentheses are necessary because in Nix, function application binds more weakly than list construction, so without them, would be a list with two elements.)

Even greater customisation is possible using the function overrideAttrs. While the override mechanism above overrides the arguments of a package function, overrideAttrs allows changing the attributes passed to mkDerivation. This permits changing any aspect of the package, such as the source code. For instance, if you want to override the source code of Emacs, you can say:

environment.systemPackages = [
  (pkgs.emacs.overrideAttrs (oldAttrs: {
    name = "emacs-25.0-pre";
    src = /path/to/my/emacs/tree;
  }))
];

Here, overrideAttrs takes the Nix derivation specified by pkgs.emacs and produces a new derivation in which the original's name and src attribute have been replaced by the given values by re-calling stdenv.mkDerivation. The original attributes are accessible via the function argument, which is conventionally named oldAttrs.

The overrides shown above are not global. They do not affect the original package; other packages in Nixpkgs continue to depend on the original rather than the customised package. This means that if another package in your system depends on the original package, you end up with two instances of the package. If you want to have everything depend on your customised instance, you can apply a global override as follows:

nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides = pkgs:
  { emacs = pkgs.emacs.override { gtk = pkgs.gtk3; };
  };

The effect of this definition is essentially equivalent to modifying the emacs attribute in the Nixpkgs source tree. Any package in Nixpkgs that depends on emacs will be passed your customised instance. (However, the value pkgs.emacs in nixpkgs.config.packageOverrides refers to the original rather than overridden instance, to prevent an infinite recursion.)

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Customising Packages

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