That only refers to when a setup hook has dependencies, that you want to make available during the build of packages using the setup hook.
At runtime, in this context, refers to the platform on which programs can/are supposed to be executed. It is also called host platform, as contrasted to build platform. There is no guarantee that the dependencies specified as propagated input will actually be available at runtime.
Actually making sure a program can find its dependencies at runtime is responsibility of the builder. For example the (default) generic builder will ensure ELF programs can load libraries listed in buildInputs it links to.
The most common reason to propagate inputs are the following:
- You are packaging a library that includes another library in its headers.
- You are building a Python package – the Python builder expects Python package dependencies to be propagated.
Meson should install the files just fine, including compiling the schemas. The reason you are probably getting an error is that the script has /bin/bash as interpreter, which is not available in build sandbox. It should be possible to fix it with:
postPatch = ''
patchShebangs meson_scripts/install_schemas.sh
'';
That sounds like a conflict between some plug-in from environment and ilia’s dependencies. It will most likely will be fixed by using wrapGAppsHook3 instead of the manual wrapping. I would recommend going through the GNOME section of the Nixpkgs manual.
You probably do not need this.
Also note that there are several other people attempting to package it, so it might be a good idea to coordinate
@strawhatluffy in Help with building ilia from source and someone else on Matrix looks like that was you.