Besides input/dependency pinning, I have always found it a bit awkward to define my own derivations for building packages not yet in the nixpkgs repository. I did a bit of a meta search a while ago and the following issues caught my attention:
- simpler, saner cross-compilation · Issue #227327 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub
- Inconsistent override mechanisms · Issue #295046 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub
- Bring all packaging layers into a single fixpoint · Issue #273815 · NixOS/nixpkgs · GitHub
These issues all mention the same question implicitly: “how do we improve the way we define derivations?” While I am not very involved with the community currently, I would really like to have solutions for the problems mentioned in these issues at some point. (Even more willing to help get it done.)
I am strongly of the opinion that improving the derivation situation in nixpkgs will allow to improve both documentation and decentralized extensions of nixpkgs. I suspect that a clearer, possibly more uniform, derivation interface will make it easier for the community to come up with a more uniform approach to supply precise dependencies to a project.