NixOS: Install a non-nix package?

Question

Currently I started using NixOS, and it's working great except for that there are some packages I want to install that are not in the repository.

The first package I had issues with is Cryptomator (https://cryptomator.org)

What I tried to do is follow this tutorial: http://anderspapitto.com/posts/2015-02-28-deb-installation-nixos.html

But I couldn't get it to work... Here is what I tried:

First I created 3 files (as in the tutorial):
- builder.sh (as-is from tutorial)
- fhs-env.nix (also as-is)
- full-cryptomator.nix (source listed below)
- dumb-cryptomator.nix (source listed below)

full-cryptomator.nix

let nixpkgs = import <nixpkgs> {};
    stdenv = nixpkgs.stdenv;
in rec {
  dumb-cryptomator = stdenv.mkDerivation {
    name = "dumb-cryptomator";
    builder = ./builder.sh;
    dpkg = nixpkgs.dpkg;
    src = nixpkgs.fetchurl {
      url = "https://bintray.com/cryptomator/cryptomator-deb/download_file?file_path=cryptomator-1.2.3-amd64.deb";
      sha256 = "f611dfd77f68ddd4b7322b1668829add987c5f8e0fcd639211b46969f1eb8ef3";
    };
  };
  full-cryptomator = nixpkgs.buildFHSUserEnv {
    name = "full-cryptomator";
    targetPkgs = pkgs: [ dumb-cryptomator ];
    multiPkgs = pkgs: [ pkgs.dpkg ];
    runScript = "Cryptomator";
  };
}

dumb-cryptomator.nix

let nixpkgs = import <nixpkgs> {};
    stdenv = nixpkgs.stdenv;
in rec {
  dumb-cryptomator = stdenv.mkDerivation {
    name = "dumb-cryptomator";
    builder = ./builder.sh;
    dpkg = nixpkgs.dpkg;
    src = nixpkgs.fetchurl {
      url = "https://bintray.com/cryptomator/cryptomator-deb/download_file?file_path=cryptomator-1.2.3-amd64.deb";
      sha256 = "f611dfd77f68ddd4b7322b1668829add987c5f8e0fcd639211b46969f1eb8ef3";
    };
  };
}

I then run:

nix-build -A fhsEnv fhs-env.nix
nix-build -A dumb-cryptomator dumb-cryptomator.nix
nix-build -A full-cryptomator full-cryptomator.nix

When the last build is completed, I don't have a full cryptomator install in my directory (at least /opt/Cryptomator should be there):

[peter@peter-laptop:~/Downloads/cryptomator]$ ls /nix/store/6prdbjgidgqaqfnvmkrhnj8xp28z8dxw-full-cryptomator
bin

Is there anyone having more experience with making third-party packages work? Thanks!

fhsEnv is kind of a last resort, typically for closed-source binary apps with specific requirements. I see they release a jar file (https://github.com/cryptomator/cryptomator/releases). Building JVM apps from source is not the most fun thing in the current nixpkgs, but getting a pre-existing jar to run seems very feasible. JVMs are package, so you just need to create a wrapper script to make the right JVM invocation. There might even be some code in nixpkgs to help you with that. — Robert Hensing, May 10 '17 at 10:48
The [How to build Nix packages from source?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49209643/) SO thread is also very useful here. — toraritte, Nov 14 '20 at 16:44

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered May 12 '17 at 09:40

At least you should change runScript = "Cryptomator"; to runScript = "${dumb-cryptomator}/Cryptomator/Cryptomator";

Debugging such kinds of problems is easy. When you run nix-build -A full-cryptomator full-cryptomator.nix, a symlink result is created, so you can access application by

$ ./result/bin/full-cryptomator /nix/store/7nc1j85m67kjd1y1fnk6xg5b7w7a1jjd-full-cryptomator-init: line 11: exec: Cryptomator: not found

Whoops! Why's that? let's look into mentioned file:

$ cat /nix/store/7nc1j85m67kjd1y1fnk6xg5b7w7a1jjd-full-cryptomator-init
#! /nix/store/wsz11sx18n85if6gp50m870rypgavwpd-bash-4.4-p12/bin/bash
for i in /nix/store/ss4j5rr2ilh878m1g5c76njcmvmrszja-full-cryptomator-fhs/* /host/*; do
  path="/${i##*/}"
  [ -e "$path" ] || /nix/store/sxzm5kva1gb0hxm60xvr45m3c5l84xlz-coreutils-8.27/bin/ln -s "$i" "$path"
done

[ -d "$1" ] && [ -r "$1" ] && cd "$1"
shift

source /etc/profile
exec Cryptomator "$@"

Looks like it can't file Cryptomator executable in current PATH. When we inspect actual dumb-cryptomator, we see

$ tree /nix/store/m31pyd1hgpa9v8gnxrjijd1v3n8vxggj-dumb-cryptomator | grep -i crypto
/nix/store/m31pyd1hgpa9v8gnxrjijd1v3n8vxggj-dumb-cryptomator
└── Cryptomator
    │   ├── cryptolib-1.0.7.jar
    │   ├── Cryptomator-1.2.3.jar
    │   ├── Cryptomator.cfg
    │   ├── filesystem-crypto-1.2.3.jar
    ├── Cryptomator
    ├── Cryptomator.desktop
    ├── cryptomator.org-Cryptomator-MimeInfo.xml
    ├── Cryptomator.png

So, it doesn't belong to standard bin folder. As we don't want to mess with package alot, we provide a full path, by using ${dumb-cryptomator} string interpolation.

(that's one of the most used features in Nix, ${dumb-cryptomator} gets expanded to /nix/store/m31pyd1hgpa9v8gnxrjijd1v3n8vxggj-dumb-cryptomator during builds)

NixOS: Install a non-nix package?

1 Answers1