Cross compilation#

Nixpkgs offers powerful tools to cross-compile software for various system types.

What do you need?#

  • Experience using C compilers

  • Basic knowledge of the Nix language

Platforms#

When compiling code, we can distinguish between the build platform, where the executable is built, and the host platform, where the compiled executable runs. [1]

Native compilation is the special case where those two platforms are the same. Cross compilation is the general case where those two platforms are not.

Cross compilation is needed when the host platform has limited resources (such as CPU) or when it’s not easily accessible for development.

The nixpkgs package collection has world-class support for cross compilation, after many years of hard work by the Nix community.

What’s a target platform?#

There is a third concept for a platform we call a target platform.

The target platform is relevant to cases where you want to build a compiler binary. In such cases, you would build a compiler on the build platform, run it to compile code on the host platform, and run the final executable on the target platform.

Since this is rarely needed, we will assume that the target is identical to the host.

Determining the host platform config#

The build platform is determined automatically by Nix during the configure phase.

The host platform is best determined by running this command on the host platform:

$ $(nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -I nixpkgs=channel:nixos-23.11 -A gnu-config)/config.guess
aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu

In case this is not possible (for example, when the host platform is not easily accessible for development), the platform config has to be constructed manually via the following template:

<cpu>-<vendor>-<os>-<abi>

This string representation is used in nixpkgs for historic reasons.

Note that <vendor> is often unknown and <abi> is optional. There’s also no unique identifier for a platform, for example unknown and pc are interchangeable (which is why the script is called config.guess).

If you can’t install Nix, find a way to run config.guess (usually comes with the autoconf package) from the OS you’re able to run on the host platform.

Some other common examples of platform configs:

  • aarch64-apple-darwin14

  • aarch64-pc-linux-gnu

  • x86_64-w64-mingw32

  • aarch64-apple-ios

Note

macOS/Darwin is a special case, as not the whole OS is open-source. It’s only possible to cross compile between aarch64-darwin and x86_64-darwin. aarch64-darwin support was recently added, so cross compilation is barely tested.

Choosing the host platform with Nix#

nixpkgs comes with a set of predefined host platforms for cross compilation called pkgsCross.

It is possible to explore them in nix repl:

Note

Starting with Nix 2.19, nix repl requires the -f / --file flag:

$ nix repl -f '<nixpkgs>' -I nixpkgs=channel:nixos-23.11

$ nix repl '<nixpkgs>' -I nixpkgs=channel:nixos-23.11
Welcome to Nix 2.18.1. Type :? for help.

Loading '<nixpkgs>'...
Added 14200 variables.

nix-repl> pkgsCross.<TAB>
pkgsCross.aarch64-android             pkgsCross.musl-power
pkgsCross.aarch64-android-prebuilt    pkgsCross.musl32
pkgsCross.aarch64-darwin              pkgsCross.musl64
pkgsCross.aarch64-embedded            pkgsCross.muslpi
pkgsCross.aarch64-multiplatform       pkgsCross.or1k
pkgsCross.aarch64-multiplatform-musl  pkgsCross.pogoplug4
pkgsCross.aarch64be-embedded          pkgsCross.powernv
pkgsCross.amd64-netbsd                pkgsCross.ppc-embedded
pkgsCross.arm-embedded                pkgsCross.ppc64
pkgsCross.armhf-embedded              pkgsCross.ppc64-musl
pkgsCross.armv7a-android-prebuilt     pkgsCross.ppcle-embedded
pkgsCross.armv7l-hf-multiplatform     pkgsCross.raspberryPi
pkgsCross.avr                         pkgsCross.remarkable1
pkgsCross.ben-nanonote                pkgsCross.remarkable2
pkgsCross.fuloongminipc               pkgsCross.riscv32
pkgsCross.ghcjs                       pkgsCross.riscv32-embedded
pkgsCross.gnu32                       pkgsCross.riscv64
pkgsCross.gnu64                       pkgsCross.riscv64-embedded
pkgsCross.i686-embedded               pkgsCross.scaleway-c1
pkgsCross.iphone32                    pkgsCross.sheevaplug
pkgsCross.iphone32-simulator          pkgsCross.vc4
pkgsCross.iphone64                    pkgsCross.wasi32
pkgsCross.iphone64-simulator          pkgsCross.x86_64-embedded
pkgsCross.mingw32                     pkgsCross.x86_64-netbsd
pkgsCross.mingwW64                    pkgsCross.x86_64-netbsd-llvm
pkgsCross.mmix                        pkgsCross.x86_64-unknown-redox
pkgsCross.msp430

These attribute names for cross compilation packages have been chosen somewhat freely over the course of time. They usually do not match the corresponding platform config string.

You can retrieve the platform string from pkgsCross.<platform>.stdenv.hostPlatform.config:

nix-repl> pkgsCross.aarch64-multiplatform.stdenv.hostPlatform.config
"aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu"

If the host platform you seek hasn’t been defined yet, please contribute it upstream.

Specifying the host platform#

The mechanism for setting up cross compilation works as follows:

  1. Take the build platform configuration and apply it to the current package set, called pkgs by convention.

    The build platform is implied in pkgs = import <nixpkgs> {} to be the current system. This produces a build environment pkgs.stdenv with all the dependencies present to compile on the build platform.

  2. Apply the appropriate host platform configuration to all the packages in pkgsCross.

    Taking pkgs.pkgsCross.<host>.hello will produce the package hello compiled on the build platform to run on the <host> platform.

There are multiple equivalent ways to access packages targeted to the host platform.

  1. Explicitly pick the host platform package from within the build platform environment:

    1let
2  nixpkgs = fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tarball/release-23.11";
3  pkgs = import nixpkgs {};
4in
5pkgs.pkgsCross.aarch64-multiplatform.hello

  2. Pass the host platform to crossSystem when importing nixpkgs. This configures nixpkgs such that all its packages are build for the host platform:

    1let
2  nixpkgs = fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tarball/release-23.11";
3  pkgs = import nixpkgs { crossSystem = { config = "aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu"; }; };
4in
5pkgs.hello

    Equivalently, you can pass the host platform as an argument to nix-build:

    $ nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -I nixpkgs=channel:nixos-23.11 \
  --arg crossSystem '{ config = "aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu"; }' \
  -A hello

Cross compiling for the first time#

To cross compile a package like hello, pick the platform attribute — aarch64-multiplatform in our case — and run:

$ nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -I nixpkgs=channel:nixos-23.11 \
  -A pkgsCross.aarch64-multiplatform.hello
...
/nix/store/1dx87l5rav8679lqigf9xxkb7wvh2m4k-hello-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu-2.12.1

Note

The hash of the package in the store path changes with the updates to the channel.

Search for a package attribute name to find the one you’re interested in building.

Real-world cross compiling of a Hello World example#

To show off the power of cross compilation in Nix, let’s build our own Hello World program by cross compiling it as static executables to armv6l-unknown-linux-gnueabihf and x86_64-w64-mingw32 (Windows) platforms and run the resulting executable with an emulator.

Given we have a cross-compile.nix:

 1let
 2  nixpkgs = fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tarball/release-23.11";
 3  pkgs = import nixpkgs {};
 4
 5  # Create a C program that prints Hello World
 6  helloWorld = pkgs.writeText "hello.c" ''
 7    #include <stdio.h>
 8
 9    int main (void)
10    {
11      printf ("Hello, world!\n");
12      return 0;
13    }
14  '';
15
16  # A function that takes host platform packages
17  crossCompileFor = hostPkgs:
18    # Run a simple command with the compiler available
19    hostPkgs.runCommandCC "hello-world-cross-test" {} ''
20      # Wine requires home directory
21      HOME=$PWD
22
23      # Compile our example using the compiler specific to our host platform
24      $CC ${helloWorld} -o hello
25
26      # Run the compiled program using user mode emulation (Qemu/Wine)
27      # buildPackages is passed so that emulation is built for the build platform
28      ${hostPkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.emulator hostPkgs.buildPackages} hello > $out
29
30      # print to stdout
31      cat $out
32    '';
33in {
34  # Statically compile our example using the two platform hosts
35  rpi = crossCompileFor pkgs.pkgsCross.raspberryPi;
36  windows = crossCompileFor pkgs.pkgsCross.mingwW64;
37}

If we build this example and print both resulting derivations, we should see “Hello, world!” for each:

$ cat $(nix-build cross-compile.nix)
Hello, world!
Hello, world!

Developer environment with a cross compiler#

In the tutorial for declarative reproducible environments, we looked at how Nix helps us provide tooling and system libraries for our project.

It’s also possible to provide an environment with a compiler configured for cross-compilation to static binaries using musl.

Given we have a shell.nix:

 1let
 2  nixpkgs = fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tarball/release-23.11";
 3  pkgs = (import nixpkgs {}).pkgsCross.aarch64-multiplatform;
 4in
 5
 6# callPackage is needed due to https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126844
 7pkgs.pkgsStatic.callPackage ({ mkShell, zlib, pkg-config, file }: mkShell {
 8  # these tools run on the build platform, but are configured to target the host platform
 9  nativeBuildInputs = [ pkg-config file ];
10  # libraries needed for the host platform
11  buildInputs = [ zlib ];
12}) {}

And hello.c:

#include <stdio.h>

int main (void)
{
  printf ("Hello, world!\n");
  return 0;
}

We can cross compile it:

$ nix-shell --run '$CC hello.c -o hello' shell.nix

And confirm it’s aarch64:

$ nix-shell --run 'file hello' shell.nix
hello: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, with debug_info, not stripped

Next steps#