May 2023
I recently wanted to develop some Emacs code. But I didn't want to do the work of finding all the different dependencies needed to install them.
I'm running NixOS, so luckily, there is a command for that.
nix develop nixpkgs#emacs
nix develop will open a shell with all the dependencies needed to develop that package.
This is a flake-based command, so I believe it needs to be building a flake.
As above, you need to specify that the package is inside nixpkgs if you're trying to use one from there. Do that with nixpkgs#your-package-here. You can presumably develop flakes from elsewhere by specifying different locations.
After running the command, I was able to build Emacs without having to install a single dependency! Thanks, Nix!