This command builds or fetches all dependencies of the given
derivation, then starts a shell with the environment variables from
the derivation. This shell also sources $stdenv/setup to initialise
the environment further.
The current directory is not changed. Thus this is a convenient way
to reproduce a build environment in an existing working tree.
Existing environment variables are left untouched (unless the
derivation overrides them). As a special hack, the original value of
$PATH is appended to the $PATH produced by $stdenv/setup.
Example session:
$ nix-build --run-env '<nixpkgs>' -A xterm
(the dependencies of xterm are built/fetched...)
$ tar xf $src
$ ./configure
$ make
$ emacs
(... hack source ...)
$ make
$ ./xterm
‘nix-store --export’.
* Add a Perl module that provides the functionality of
‘nix-copy-closure --to’. This is used by build-remote.pl so it no
longer needs to start a separate nix-copy-closure process. Also, it
uses the Perl API to do the export, so it doesn't need to start a
separate nix-store process either. As a result, nix-copy-closure
and build-remote.pl should no longer fail on very large closures due
to an "Argument list too long" error. (Note that having very many
dependencies in a single derivation can still fail because the
environment can become too large. Can't be helped though.)
bindings to be used in Nix's own Perl scripts.
The only downside is that Perl XS and Automake/libtool don't really
like each other, so building is a bit tricky.
