How to install OpenSSL to compile against?

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Hi nix community, loving the idea behind nix/nixos.

I’m trying out nixos and nix (in docker) to host a rust program. It’s asking me to set OPENSSL_DIR or OPENSSL_LIB_DIR, I installed:

nix-env -iA nixos.openssl

  1. Is that the right package or is there a -dev package somewhere?
  2. Do I need to give it some flags (somehow) for nix to install the openssl lib and includes?
  3. Is there a recommended way to pick up the dir that nix is using for openssl?

Thanks in advance,

Giles

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This lead me to the answers:
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/15011

The lib, includes are in a dir with ‘-dev’ appended in the /nix/store rather than in the standard dir.
TODO: Find nice way to pick up that dir.

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https://nixos.wiki/wiki/FAQ/Libraries

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openssl is a split package (with multiple outputs). Read more about it there especially “using a split package”
The dir your are looking for is actually the attribute openssl.dev in nix parlance.

Side comment: openssl still points to v1.0.2. If you are starting a fresh project you might want to use openssl_1_1_0 :

nix-env -iA nixos.openssl_1_1_0
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Adding to the answer from Linus, you probably don’t want to use nix-env for this. Typical cases

  • you want to do the full build of the program via a nix-build (you need to write a nix expression for that); or
  • you want a development environment via nix-shell -p openssl (writing shell.nix can be useful for complex cases or repeated usage).
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That’s really working well.

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or not. thread ‘main’ panicked at /home/gilescope/.cargo/registry/src/index.crates.io-6f17d22bba15001f/openssl-sys-0.9.93/build/main.rs:79:9:
OpenSSL include directory does not exist: /home/gilescope/.nix-profile/bin/openssl/include

The answer is to get every project in the world to compile with rustls by default. That’s the only way right? Or could I perhaps get into a shell that has the includes hanging about? I just want cargo install cargo-raze to work. I get this with every tool that tries to use openssl. It’s so boring. (no pun intended)

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This directory seems really suspicious. Even searching includes inside bin. And you surely don’t want to involve nix-profile anyway, as that brings more issues than advantages (I wrote about that in my previous post).

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Good spot. I was overriding in my .zshrc the OPENSSL_DIR to try and point it to somewhere to make it work. Clearly that short term fix tripped me up!