I'm having trouble overriding stdenv for the nix package:

{
  inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-25.05";

  outputs =
    inputs:
    let
      pkgs = import inputs.nixpkgs {
        system = "x86_64-linux";
      };
    in
    {
      packages.x86_64-linux = {
        nix_2_30_clang = pkgs.nixVersions.nix_2_30.override {
          stdenv = pkgs.clangStdenv;
        };
      };
    };
}

Building this package does not actually trigger a build but reuses the gcc artifacts while rebuilding some kind of wrapper (?)

$ nix build .#packages.x86_64-linux.nix_2_30_clang
$ readelf -p .comment ./result/bin/nix
String dump of section '.comment':
  [     1]  GCC: (GNU) 14.3.0

This should probably say something like:

  [     0]  GCC: (GNU) 14.3.0
  [    12]  clang version 18.1.8

Overriding still works for the autoconf based build (nix_2_24) but not for any of the newer package builds. It seems like the override is silently ignored and not passed down to the sub-derivations anymore.

Did you try?

nixVersions = prev.nixVersions.extend (final: prev: 
  nixComponents_2_31 = prev.nixComponents_2_31.overrideScope (finalScope: prevScope: { stdenv = pkgs_25_05.clangStdenv; };
};

In reply to @oddlama:matrix.org
Yes that is looking good, thanks. Is this the preferred way to do overrides for those types of packages now?

Also an example on how to add patches

    nixComponents_2_31 = (prev.nixComponents_2_31.overrideScope (finalScope: prevScope: {
      aws-sdk-cpp = null;
      boost = boost231;
      withAWS = false;
    })).appendPatches (commonPatches ++ [
      ./nix-derivation-better-copy-2.30.diff
    ]);

Also an example on how to add patches

    nixComponents_2_31 = (prev.nixComponents_2_31.overrideScope (finalScope: prevScope: {
      aws-sdk-cpp = null;
      boost = boost231;
      withAWS = false;
    })).appendPatches [
      ./nix-derivation-better-copy-2.30.diff
    ];