Debugging nix flake builds

1

I have a very simple flake, that exports some packages. Now a build step is not working, and I am trying to debug it. With usual package builds I am used to dropping into nix-shell and being able to run the individual phases one-by-one Nixpkgs Manual. With nix flakes, I can’t get this to work.

Question: How is the debugging flow for package builds with nix-flakes supposed to look like?

I know about nix develop. It looks like this generally assumes an explicit devShell/mkShell attributes to be defined, to setup a development environment. This environment does not come with the build phase scripts defined – at least not out of the box. Using nix develop .#package did not work for me either.

Example:

cat flake.nix
{
  description = "A simple Nix flake to run Python HTTP server";
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-22.05";
  };
  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, ... } @inputs:
    let
      system = "x86_64-darwin";
      pkgs = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.${system};
    in
    {
      packages.${system} = rec {
        hello1 = builtins.derivation {
          name = "hello1";
          system = "x86_64-darwin";
          builder = "${pkgs.bash}/bin/bash";
          args = [ "-c" "${pkgs.coreutils}/bin/mkdir -p $out && echo 'Hello X1 World' > $out/hello.txt" ];
        };
        hello2 = pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation {
          name = "hello2";
          phases = [ "buildPhase" ];
          buildPhase = ''
            mkdir -p $out
            echo "Hello X2 World" > $out/hello.txt
          '';
          outputs = [ "out" ];
        };
      };
    };
}

I purposefully inserted typos “X1” , “X2” that I want to debug into the code. Running nix build .#hello1 and nix build .#hello2 produce expected results.

Now:

; nix develop .#hello1
# 2024-03-20 15:31:05
error: builder for '/nix/store/r37r46xcn7v6wr45a7q2s2nwfmciac4y-hello1-env.drv' failed to produce output path for output 'out' at '/nix/store/19rmk59jv3rdx93j4h5yh9csxaccnbzq-hello1-env'
# FAILED(1) after 3.000s

; nix develop .#hello2
bash-5.1$ buildPhase 
no Makefile, doing nothing
bash-5.1$