Ghostty nix marked as broken

[momrak]

I had a working Ghostty setup for a few days, but after an upgrade it stopped working.
I use nix on macos mainly as a package manager, so I am not very seasoned in debugging things like this, but I'll try to assist if I can.

I saw some similar issues, but none of them seemed to have the marked as broken state.

evaluation warning: qt6Packages.stdenv is deprecated. Use stdenv instead.
error:
       … while calling the 'derivationStrict' builtin
         at <nix/derivation-internal.nix>:34:12:
           33|
           34|   strict = derivationStrict drvAttrs;
             |            ^
           35|

       … while evaluating derivation 'darwin-system-25.05.20250106.3df3c47+darwin5.ba9b317'
         whose name attribute is located at /nix/store/310zziyyjnc0yhw2089vq4rha0x1kl9p-source/pkgs/stdenv/generic/make-derivation.nix:375:7

       … while evaluating attribute 'activationScript' of derivation 'darwin-system-25.05.20250106.3df3c47+darwin5.ba9b317'
         at /nix/store/kfk47krxkhacdxp8cf6flr3yvpnciggz-source/modules/system/default.nix:97:7:
           96|
           97|       activationScript = cfg.activationScripts.script.text;
             |       ^
           98|       activationUserScript = cfg.activationScripts.userScript.text;

       … while evaluating the option `system.activationScripts.script.text':

       … while evaluating definitions from `/nix/store/kfk47krxkhacdxp8cf6flr3yvpnciggz-source/modules/system/activation-scripts.nix':

       … while evaluating the option `system.activationScripts.postActivation.text':

       … while evaluating definitions from `<unknown-file>':

       … while evaluating the option `home-manager.users.momrak.home.activation.checkFilesChanged.data':

       … while evaluating definitions from `/nix/store/k9sy76amz6jgpxl2rpc5b4dvjlpvxr3k-source/modules/files.nix':

       … while evaluating the option `home-manager.users.momrak.home.file."Library/Fonts/.home-manager-fonts-version".onChange':

       … while evaluating definitions from `/nix/store/k9sy76amz6jgpxl2rpc5b4dvjlpvxr3k-source/modules/targets/darwin/fonts.nix':

       (stack trace truncated; use '--show-trace' to show the full, detailed trace)

       error: Package ‘ghostty-1.0.1’ in /nix/store/v7xk0k2i7hpimrp6cgs1rh8iijdffb54-source/pkgs/by-name/gh/ghostty/package.nix:172 is marked as broken, refusing to evaluate.

       a) To temporarily allow broken packages, you can use an environment variable
          for a single invocation of the nix tools.

            $ export NIXPKGS_ALLOW_BROKEN=1

          Note: When using `nix shell`, `nix build`, `nix develop`, etc with a flake,
                then pass `--impure` in order to allow use of environment variables.

       b) For `nixos-rebuild` you can set
         { nixpkgs.config.allowBroken = true; }
       in configuration.nix to override this.

       c) For `nix-env`, `nix-build`, `nix-shell` or any other Nix command you can add
         { allowBroken = true; }
       to ~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix.

If I then try to run it with allowBroken I get the following

Using versionCheckHook
Running phase: unpackPhase
@nix { "action": "setPhase", "phase": "unpackPhase" }
unpacking source archive /nix/store/8cdcanba7c1zxcb59pigdilxdxhyyay4-source
source root is source
Running phase: patchPhase
@nix { "action": "setPhase", "phase": "patchPhase" }
Running phase: updateAutotoolsGnuConfigScriptsPhase
@nix { "action": "setPhase", "phase": "updateAutotoolsGnuConfigScriptsPhase" }
Running phase: configurePhase
@nix { "action": "setPhase", "phase": "configurePhase" }
no configure script, doing nothing
Running phase: buildPhase
@nix { "action": "setPhase", "phase": "buildPhase" }
zig build flags: -Dcpu=baseline -Doptimize=ReleaseFast --color off --system /nix/store/kihh13phiirj0a2gi0g0v9gzx7l8lixz-ghostty-cache-1.0.1 -Dversion-string=1.0.1 -Dapp-runtime=none -Dfont-backend=coretext -Dgtk-ad>
thread 12366627 panic: unhandled error
/private/tmp/nix-build-ghostty-1.0.1.drv-0/source/pkg/apple-sdk/build.zig:43:41: 0x104e86d87 in addPaths (build)
    const path = gop.value_ptr.* orelse return switch (target.os.tag) {
                                        ^
/private/tmp/nix-build-ghostty-1.0.1.drv-0/source/pkg/libpng/build.zig:20:9: 0x105042c77 in build (build)
        try apple_sdk.addPaths(b, &lib.root_module);
        ^
/nix/store/3nnpav1mqgmm3k4ab297hl6g54l1lzms-zig-0.13.0/lib/zig/std/Build.zig:2117:24: 0x104f8a703 in runBuild__anon_20017 (build)
        .ErrorUnion => try build_zig.build(b),
                       ^
/nix/store/3nnpav1mqgmm3k4ab297hl6g54l1lzms-zig-0.13.0/lib/zig/std/Build.zig:2097:40: 0x104f15c6b in dependencyInner__anon_18824 (build)
        sub_builder.runBuild(bz) catch @panic("unhandled error");
                                       ^
/nix/store/3nnpav1mqgmm3k4ab297hl6g54l1lzms-zig-0.13.0/lib/zig/std/Build.zig:1954:35: 0x104e94833 in dependency__anon_11803 (build)
            return dependencyInner(b, name, pkg.build_root, if (@hasDecl(pkg, "build_zig")) pkg.build_zig else null, pkg_hash, pkg.deps, args);
                                  ^
/private/tmp/nix-build-ghostty-1.0.1.drv-0/source/build.zig:1172:40: 0x104e8b61f in addDeps (build)
        const libpng_dep = b.dependency("libpng", .{
                                       ^
/private/tmp/nix-build-ghostty-1.0.1.drv-0/source/build.zig:1061:31: 0x104ea2027 in createIOSLib (build)
    var lib_list = try addDeps(b, lib, config);
                              ^
/private/tmp/nix-build-ghostty-1.0.1.drv-0/source/build.zig:740:66: 0x104ea6673 in build (build)
        const ios_lib_step, const ios_lib_path = try createIOSLib(
                                                                 ^
/nix/store/3nnpav1mqgmm3k4ab297hl6g54l1lzms-zig-0.13.0/lib/zig/std/Build.zig:2117:43: 0x104e62757 in runBuild__anon_8447 (build)
        .ErrorUnion => try build_zig.build(b),
                                          ^
/nix/store/3nnpav1mqgmm3k4ab297hl6g54l1lzms-zig-0.13.0/lib/zig/compiler/build_runner.zig:301:29: 0x104e5d6b7 in main (build)
        try builder.runBuild(root);
                            ^
/nix/store/3nnpav1mqgmm3k4ab297hl6g54l1lzms-zig-0.13.0/lib/zig/std/start.zig:524:37: 0x104e64dc3 in main (build)
            const result = root.main() catch |err| {
                                    ^
???:?:?: 0x180ca20df in ??? (???)
???:?:?: 0x61617fffffffffff in ??? (???)
error: the following build command crashed:
/private/tmp/nix-build-ghostty-1.0.1.drv-0/source/.zig-cache/o/1f30dafdd7b6506dde6161427f510ed9/build /nix/store/3nnpav1mqgmm3k4ab297hl6g54l1lzms-zig-0.13.0/bin/zig /private/tmp/nix-build-ghostty-1.0.1.drv-0/source>
lines 1-53/53 (END)

[rhodes-b]

It was marked as broken for nix-darwin because the way it was originally implimented ended up with build issues and would cause issues with sparkle doing auto updates people are working to build it with xcode sucessfully but it is compilcated as apple toolchain does not play nice.

The reason it was originally in was someone merged without the maintainers, which would have not been merged otherwise

[momrak]

Aha, I see. Thank you for the clarification