$TMPDIR with nix-build and sandbox

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Not sure if I’m doing something wrong here, but observing the following.
Given api.nix is a simple buildGoModule with a checkPhase that runs unit and integration tests:

On Linux (PopOS w/ Nix):

  • Running nix-build api.nix from the main shell, $TMPDIR is set to /build, and tests fail because they’re creating a sqlite db in $TMPDIR
  • Entering nix-shell and then running nix-build api.nix, $TMPDIR is set to /run/user/1000 and stuff works OK
  • Running nix-build --option sandbox false api.nix succeeds because $TMPDIR becomes /tmp/nix-build-api.drv-0

On macOS:

  • nix-build api.nix works, but I’m oberving $TMPDIR being /private/tmp/nix-build-api.drv-0 which behaves like Linux with no sandbox.

The most confusing part here is the different behavior of executing nix-build on Linux based on if you’re already in nix-shell or not. Is there something I’m obviously doing wrong here? I’d expect that builds are completely hermetic (i.e. being inside of nix-shell not affecting the value of $TMPDIR), and would also expect that $TMPDIR is writable for test data.

Before using $TMPDIR, I used to hardcode /tmp in all of the places that needed this. IIRC, there were problems on macOS. In any case, macOS&linux behavior was different which was defeating the purpose of using something like nix for this.