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nixpkgs/doc/builders/special/mkshell.section.md
Jonas Chevalier 1e910209ae
mkShell: make it buildable (#153194)
When I designed `mkShell`, I didn't have a good idea of what the output
should look like and so decided to make the build fail. In practice,
this causes quite a bit of confusion and complications because now the
shell cannot be part of a normal package set without failing the CI as
well.

This commit changes that build phase to record all the build inputs in a
file. That way it becomes possible to build it, makes sure that all the
build inputs get built as well, and also can be used as a GC root.
(by applying the same trick as #95536).

The documentation has also been improved to better describe what mkShell
does and how to use it.
2022-01-08 01:54:04 +01:00

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Markdown

# pkgs.mkShell {#sec-pkgs-mkShell}
`pkgs.mkShell` is a specialized `stdenv.mkDerivation` that removes some
repetition when using it with `nix-shell` (or `nix develop`).
## Usage {#sec-pkgs-mkShell-usage}
Here is a common usage example:
```nix
{ pkgs ? import <nixpkgs> {} }:
pkgs.mkShell {
packages = [ pkgs.gnumake ];
inputsFrom = [ pkgs.hello pkgs.gnutar ];
shellHook = ''
export DEBUG=1
'';
}
```
## Attributes
* `name` (default: `nix-shell`). Set the name of the derivation.
* `packages` (default: `[]`). Add executable packages to the `nix-shell` environment.
* `inputsFrom` (default: `[]`). Add build dependencies of the listed derivations to the `nix-shell` environment.
* `shellHook` (default: `""`). Bash statements that are executed by `nix-shell`.
... all the attributes of `stdenv.mkDerivation`.
## Building the shell
This derivation output will contain a text file that contains a reference to
all the build inputs. This is useful in CI where we want to make sure that
every derivation, and its dependencies, build properly. Or when creating a GC
root so that the build dependencies don't get garbage-collected.