Run dynamically linked non‐nix binaries on Red‐Flake

You can use nix-alien to run dynamically linked binaries on Red-Flake.

The problem:

When trying to run dynamically linked executables on NixOS, you might encounter errors like these:

$ ./httpx
Could not start dynamically linked executable: ./httpx
NixOS cannot run dynamically linked executables intended for generic
linux environments out of the box. For more information, see:
https://nix.dev/permalink/stub-ld

or

$ ./httpx
bash: ./httpx: No such file or directory

or

$ ./tor-browser/Browser/updater
./tor-browser/Browser/updater: error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-3.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

NixOS does not support running dynamically linked binaries intended for other Linux distributions out of the box. This is where nix-alien comes in handy.

Using nix-alien

nix-alien creates a Foreign Host System (FHS) shell with all necessary shared dependencies to execute the binary.

Usage:

❯ nix-alien <binary>

Example:

❯ nix-alien ./httpx

    __    __  __       _  __
   / /_  / /_/ /_____ | |/ /
  / __ \/ __/ __/ __ \|   /
 / / / / /_/ /_/ /_/ /   |
/_/ /_/\__/\__/ .___/_/|_|
             /_/

                projectdiscovery.io

[INF] Current httpx version v1.3.3 (outdated)

To pass arguments to the application:

nix-alien ./httpx -- --foo bar

Using nix-alien-ld

Alternatively, you can use nix-alien-ld to run the binary. This method spawns a wrapped binary with NIX_LD_LIBRARY_PATH and NIX_LD properly set up.

❯ nix-alien-ld ./httpx

    __    __  __       _  __
   / /_  / /_/ /_____ | |/ /
  / __ \/ __/ __/ __ \|   /
 / / / / /_/ /_/ /_/ /   |
/_/ /_/\__/\__/ .___/_/|_|
             /_/

                projectdiscovery.io

[INF] Current httpx version v1.3.3 (outdated)

This will generate a default.nix file saved to $XDG_CACHE_HOME/nix-alien/<path-uuid>/nix-ld/default.nix, speeding up future evaluations. The cache is based on the binary's absolute path.

Additional Flags:

• --recreate: Forces the recreation of the default.nix file.
• --destination: Changes where the default.nix file will be saved.