depot/third_party/nixpkgs/nixos/doc/manual/configuration/adding-custom-packages.section.md

Adding Custom Packages

It's possible that a package you need is not available in NixOS. In that case, you can do two things. First, you can clone the Nixpkgs repository, add the package to your clone, and (optionally) submit a patch or pull request to have it accepted into the main Nixpkgs repository. This is described in detail in the Nixpkgs manual. In short, you clone Nixpkgs:

$ git clone https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs
$ cd nixpkgs

Then you write and test the package as described in the Nixpkgs manual. Finally, you add it to , e.g.

environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.my-package ];

and you run nixos-rebuild, specifying your own Nixpkgs tree:

# nixos-rebuild switch -I nixpkgs=/path/to/my/nixpkgs

The second possibility is to add the package outside of the Nixpkgs tree. For instance, here is how you specify a build of the GNU Hello package directly in configuration.nix:

environment.systemPackages =
  let
    my-hello = with pkgs; stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
      name = "hello-2.8";
      src = fetchurl {
        url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
        sha256 = "0wqd8sjmxfskrflaxywc7gqw7sfawrfvdxd9skxawzfgyy0pzdz6";
      };
    };
  in
  [ my-hello ];

Of course, you can also move the definition of my-hello into a separate Nix expression, e.g.

environment.systemPackages = [ (import ./my-hello.nix) ];

where my-hello.nix contains:

with import <nixpkgs> {}; # bring all of Nixpkgs into scope

stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
  name = "hello-2.8";
  src = fetchurl {
    url = "mirror://gnu/hello/${name}.tar.gz";
    sha256 = "0wqd8sjmxfskrflaxywc7gqw7sfawrfvdxd9skxawzfgyy0pzdz6";
  };
}

This allows testing the package easily:

$ nix-build my-hello.nix
$ ./result/bin/hello
Hello, world!