On Thu, Jul 23, 2026 at 05:07:22PM +0100, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > The problem reported by Alexis did _not_ involve the distribution > archive, because that's not how NixOS prefers to build software, but it > did raise a matter that I believe to be closely related.
Slight correction on this: NixOS very much prefers distribution archives of official releases. It's just that as a groff and NixOS enthusiast I have a personal setup to build groff from either official archives including rc's and unoffical git snapshots. Previously because I wanted to write my macro packages against the current state of groff rather than official but at the time somewhat aged releases. Nowadays because I'm including custom fonts with my groff build and I'd like to contribute to groff and NixOS by identifying build or other regressions early and ideally offer potential fixes. When building from unofficial git snapshots my setup is in some way(s) special: it does not offer a full a git clone with history and submodules, configures groff to build from a separate gnulib, by using ./bootstrap --no-git --gnulib-srcdir=$PATH_TO_GNULIB, although I use the same version of gnulib that is referenced by the git submodule in the groff repo, and patches a few minor things like the version number as mentioned in a previous mail of mine. Best Alexis
