Nixpkgs: Can we make it easier to make a derivation with no source?

[chris-martin]

If you call mkDerivation without specifying src or srcs, it fails to build with

variable $src or $srcs should point to the source

Sometimes I want to make a derivation that has no source, like if it only needs to combine things from other derivations.

I usually resort to

src = builtins.filterSource (path: type: false) ./.;

Is there some more convenient way to do this?

[FRidh]

You could pass unpackPhase = "true";. In other cases an option might be pkgs.runCommand.

[LnL7]

You can also configure what phases should run for a derivation, but I think using a noop for the unpackPhase is generally a better solution. eg. phases = [ "installPhase" "fixupPhase" ];

[FRidh]

I think the question has been answered so I am closing this.