Error running Nodejs projects that depend on the `sass-embedded` npm package

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1

Hi guys, I have a node project which breaks when I run the development server and the issue seems to be sass-embedded , but I don’t know why it happens. I’m using direnv and flakes to build the dev environment and here’s how it looks like:

{
  description = "A very basic flake";

  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs?ref=nixos-unstable";

    rust-overlay = {
      url = "github:oxalica/rust-overlay";
      inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
    };
  };

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, rust-overlay }: let
    system = "x86_64-linux";

    overlays = [ (import rust-overlay) ];

    pkgs = import nixpkgs {
      inherit system overlays;
    };

    rustBin = pkgs.pkgsBuildHost.rust-bin;
    rustPkg = rustBin.fromRustupToolchainFile
      ./rust-toolchain.toml;

  in {
    devShell.${system} = with pkgs; mkShell {
      nativeBuildInputs = [
        pkg-config
        gobject-introspection
        rustPkg
        cargo-tauri
        cargo-outdated

        pnpm
        nodejs-slim_24
        typescript-language-server
      ];

      buildInputs = [
        dart-sass
        webkitgtk_4_1
        openssl
        pango
        libsoup_3
        librsvg
        harfbuzz
        gtk3
        glib
        gdk-pixbuf
        cairo
        atkmm
        at-spi2-atk

        xdo
        xdotool
      ];

      SASS_EMBEDDED_BIN_PATH = "${pkgs.dart-sass}/bin/sass";
    };
  };
}

But when I try to run it I get Error: write EPIPE error, and I have this same issue with other projects that also depend on sass-embedded I’m attaching a picture with the error in question

image
image1265×564 188 KB

2

I have the same error using devenv for a Vue + Quasar project:

{ pkgs, lib, config, inputs, ... }:

{
    languages = {
        java = {
            enable = true;
            gradle.enable = true;
        };

        javascript = {
            enable = true;
            directory = "./frontend";
            npm = {
                enable = true;
                install.enable = true;
            };
        };

        typescript = {
            enable = true;
        };
    };

    cachix.enable = false;
}
3

I haven’t been able to fix the issue, so my solution for now was simply to move to Arch Linux. I’d love to understand why this happens, though

4

Sorry for you then! In most cases, this kind of issue happens because the underlying package manager (e.g., npm) tries to download prebuilt binaries and run them “as-is” on your machine.

On NixOS, this approach doesn’t work. You can’t just run arbitrary prebuilt binaries. You have 2 options:

  • Either you fully know and understand your dependency tree and provide the required dependencies explicitly,
  • Or you let the package manager try to fetch and run them, and it will likely fail.

There are workarounds (e.g., nix-ld can help in some cases), but the most reliable solution is to avoid relying on auto-downloaded binaries altogether. Instead, make sure all dependencies are declared and available in your environment so that Node doesn’t attempt to fetch them at runtime.

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