GTK build broken referring to cairo-xlib under unknown circumstances

[deliciouslytyped]

Myself and at least one other person appear to have run into this issue in rapid succession.

The error in the build is as follows:

Did not find CMake 'cmake'
Found CMake: NO
Run-time dependency cairo-xlib found: NO (tried pkgconfig)
 
meson.build:516:97: ERROR: Dependency "cairo-xlib" not found, tried pkgconfig

A solution listed on #102137 appears to work: set environment.noXlibs = lib.mkForce false;.

My question is why the heck is this even a problem and how do we fix it?

[deliciouslytyped]

Wait a minute, I just realized I'm using containers, and the other user is as well.
Given the odd corner cases I've run into, I'm starting to think this is not a coincidence.

It may be a coincidence, because I'm not 100% sure that the part of the build this happens in, involves the isContainer option set to true.

Edit: I was also pointed to guyonvarch/playos@a9669ca

[deliciouslytyped]

Ok, having looked at https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/config/no-x-libs.nix , this makes a lot more sense. I'm using the netboot-minimal module which sets noXlibs to true via the profile module: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/nixos/modules/profiles/minimal.nix

[julian1]

Running in a container also. I needed,

config.environment.noXlibs = false;

rather than,

# config.environment.noXlibs = pkgs.lib.mkForce false;

which goes into recursion.