NixOS/nix
Voir sur GitHub[FEAT]: Introduce new error message for packages without `mainProgram`
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#15 138 ouverte le 3 févr. 2026
error-messagesfeaturegood first issuenew-cli
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Description
Is your feature request related to a problem?
Some packages have multiple binaries with different purposes therefore setting mainProgram is not desirable.
When mainProgram is not set for these packages nix run errors out with
error: unable to execute '/nix/store/abc/bin/xyz': No such file or directory
Proposed solution
A new error for packages that don't have the mainProgram attribute set, something like
error: in 'abc': 'mainProgram' isn't set
Alternative solutions
An option to set mainProgram to null for packages that desire to do so, leaving the default behavior of mainProgram = pname; intact. An error like
error: 'abc' doesn't have a default binary
would be better in this case.
Additional context
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/486543
Checklist
- checked latest Nix manual (source)
- checked open feature issues and pull requests for possible duplicates
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