Unverified Commit 8669061b authored by Adam Joseph's avatar Adam Joseph Committed by GitHub
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Merge pull request #225272 from amjoseph-nixpkgs/pr/docs/broken-vs-badPlatforms

doc/stdenv/meta.chapter.md: explain difference between broken and badPlatforms
parents 6598663b 75bbbbd3
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@@ -182,7 +182,26 @@ meta.hydraPlatforms = [];

### `broken` {#var-meta-broken}

If set to `true`, the package is marked as "broken", meaning that it won’t show up in `nix-env -qa`, and cannot be built or installed. Such packages should be removed from Nixpkgs eventually unless they are fixed.
If set to `true`, the package is marked as "broken", meaning that it won’t show up in [search.nixos.org](https://search.nixos.org/packages), and cannot be built or installed unless the environment variable [`NIXPKGS_ALLOW_BROKEN`](#opt-allowBroken) is set.
Such unconditionally-broken packages should be removed from Nixpkgs eventually unless they are fixed.

The value of this attribute can depend on a package's arguments, including `stdenv`.
This means that `broken` can be used to express constraints, for example:

- Does not cross compile

  ```nix
   meta.broken = !(stdenv.buildPlatform.canExecute stdenv.hostPlatform)
  ```

- Broken if all of a certain set of its dependencies are broken

  ```nix
  meta.broken = lib.all (map (p: p.meta.broken) [ glibc musl ])
  ```

This makes `broken` strictly more powerful than `meta.badPlatforms`.
However `meta.availableOn` currently examines only `meta.platforms` and `meta.badPlatforms`, so `meta.broken` does not influence the default values for optional dependencies.

## Licenses {#sec-meta-license}