NixOS/nix

[FEAT]: Introduce new error message for packages without `mainProgram`

Aberta

#15.138 aberto em 3 de fev. de 2026

 (1 comentário) (0 reação) (0 responsável)C++ (1.293 forks)batch import
error-messagesfeaturegood first issuenew-cli

Métricas do repositório

Stars
 (9.803 estrelas)
Métricas de merge de PR
 (Mesclagem média 7d 11h) (83 fundiu PRs em 30d)

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


Add :+1: to issues you find important.

Guia do colaborador