I was wondering, why some packages appear in older versions than in the github repo when querying them via nix-env -qa .. . I learned that this is due to the fact that the master branch has not been merged to the unstable-channel.
How would I manually install a derivation from the master branch, in order to get the latest version?
Going for the master branch can be a little risky as the binary substitutes might not be available and you can end building lot of packages.
That said, you can specify which nixpkgs will be used by nix-env with the -f flag.
So let's say you want to build hello from master, you can use the following:
$ nix-env -f https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/master.tar.gz -iA hello
It is also possible to try git branches packages in a nix shell by using -I nixpkgs=/path/to/nix/pkgs:
$ nix-shell -p hello -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/master.tar.gz
The most flexible way is:
git clone https://github.com/nixos/nixpkgs
cd nixpkgs
nix-build -A hello
nix-env -i $(readlink result)
