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# Builder Syntax
source $stdenv/setup
PATH=$perl/bin:$PATH
tar xvfz $src
cd hello-*
./configure --prefix=$out
make
make install
[example\_title](#ex-hello-builder) shows the builder referenced from
Hello's Nix expression (stored in
`pkgs/applications/misc/hello/ex-1/builder.sh`). The builder can
actually be made a lot shorter by using the *generic builder* functions
provided by `stdenv`, but here we write out the build steps to elucidate
what a builder does. It performs the following steps:
- When Nix runs a builder, it initially completely clears the
environment (except for the attributes declared in the derivation).
For instance, the PATH variable is empty\[1\]. This is done to
prevent undeclared inputs from being used in the build process. If
for example the PATH contained `/usr/bin`, then you might
accidentally use `/usr/bin/gcc`.
So the first step is to set up the environment. This is done by
calling the `setup` script of the standard environment. The
environment variable stdenv points to the location of the standard
environment being used. (It wasn't specified explicitly as an
attribute in [???](#ex-hello-nix), but `mkDerivation` adds it
automatically.)
- Since Hello needs Perl, we have to make sure that Perl is in the
PATH. The perl environment variable points to the location of the
Perl package (since it was passed in as an attribute to the
derivation), so `$perl/bin` is the directory containing the Perl
interpreter.
- Now we have to unpack the sources. The `src` attribute was bound to
the result of fetching the Hello source tarball from the network, so
the src environment variable points to the location in the Nix store
to which the tarball was downloaded. After unpacking, we `cd` to the
resulting source directory.
The whole build is performed in a temporary directory created in
`/tmp`, by the way. This directory is removed after the builder
finishes, so there is no need to clean up the sources afterwards.
Also, the temporary directory is always newly created, so you don't
have to worry about files from previous builds interfering with the
current build.
- GNU Hello is a typical Autoconf-based package, so we first have to
run its `configure` script. In Nix every package is stored in a
separate location in the Nix store, for instance
`/nix/store/9a54ba97fb71b65fda531012d0443ce2-hello-2.1.1`. Nix
computes this path by cryptographically hashing all attributes of
the derivation. The path is passed to the builder through the out
environment variable. So here we give `configure` the parameter
`--prefix=$out` to cause Hello to be installed in the expected
location.
- Finally we build Hello (`make`) and install it into the location
specified by out (`make install`).
If you are wondering about the absence of error checking on the result
of various commands called in the builder: this is because the shell
script is evaluated with Bash's `-e` option, which causes the script to
be aborted if any command fails without an error check.
1. Actually, it's initialised to `/path-not-set` to prevent Bash from
setting it to a default value.
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