[Nix-dev] gcc for MacOS X

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Konrad Hinsen <konrad.hinsen at fastmail.net> skribis:

> Actually, I wonder how your setup works: if stdenv contains gcc46, and
> building gcc46 requires stdenv, what gets built first?

For Nixpkgs, Darwin is an “impure” platform–i.e., Nixpkgs assumes some
tools are initially available on the machine under /usr/bin & co., and
uses them to bootstrap ‘stdenv’.

Concretely, there’s first an ‘stdenvNative’ that gets built, which is
essentially a set of symlinks from a store path to /usr/bin/gcc,
/usr/bin/ld, etc.

Then, the final stdenv, called ‘stdenvNix’, gets built.  It uses the
tools from ‘stdenvNative’ to build GMP, MPFR, MPC, GCC, etc.

See pkgs/stdenv/default.nix for details.

Thanks,
Ludo’.