Do not set DESTDIR in makeFlags

[jtojnar]

DESTDIR is used by some package managers as a poor man’s sandbox, transparent to the package. Setting DESTDIR=$(out) PREFIX= in makeFlags
will place the files in the correct directory but the program itself will not be aware of the files’ location. For example, if the source code is hardcoding PREFIX "foo", it will try to open foo instead of $out/foo.

This is usually done when make install tries to create a $(DESTDIR)/var directory but as described above, it can have a negative side effect.

With autotools you can set installFlags = [ "localstatedir=${placeholder "out"}/var" ]; or installFlags = [ "sysconfdir=${placeholder "out"}/etc" ]; that should fix most instances of the issue. When the project using hand-written Makefiles, you need to check the files to see how to replace them. In the worst case, especially when the paths are hard-coded in the build files, you will need to patch the build files.

[matthewbauer]

Some documentation on this could also go a long way. I've written up some basic docs:

---

The global configure policy of Nixpkgs (which should be set for you when using autotools, but not necessarily other build systems) is:

• prefix: "$(out)"
• destdir: ""
• sysconfdir: "/etc"
• localstatedir: "/var"
• disable static, enable shared

It's a fairly common mistake to do DESTDIR=$(out) PREFIX=$(out), which is incorrect and ends up getting you a directory structure that looks like /nix/store/...-.../nix/store/...-.../....

To make sure installation happens correctly, you sometimes have to override make install flags like so:

installFlags = [ "sysconfdir=$(out)/etc" "localstatedir=$out/var" ];

[stale]

Thank you for your contributions.

This has been automatically marked as stale because it has had no activity for 180 days.

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[jtojnar]

This is a best practices issue, we still need to find a better place for it.

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[AndersonTorres]

Is this sprintable?

[jtojnar]

Yes. Each expression needs to be evaluated separately so the labour can be divided.

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/creating-my-first-package-i3-gnome-in-nixos/10474/4

[jonringer]

Can we update the nixpkgs manual to include this under the https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#var-stdenv-makefile section and close this issue?

It would also be a lot more discoverable

[stale]

I marked this as stale due to inactivity. → More info

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/import-problems-creating-a-new-package-45drives-autotier/22035/6

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/import-problems-creating-a-new-package-45drives-autotier/22035/7

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/compile-openssl-with-nix-pkgs/37289/2

[SuperSandro2000]

Can someone help me with waydroid/waydroid#1218 ?