In reply to @trexd:matrix.org
Well currently updating flax is marked as broken on nixpkgs because it requires orbax to be built. I've started packaging orbax; however it requires a newer version of Jax than what is currently available on nixpkgs. Seems like people are working on it over here https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/227145 but it's stalled because of the changes breaking a lot of packages. I was wondering what the best way to insert myself in this process to help out in getting an update to jax merged so I can fix the state of the flax pacakge.

So I've started playing with Nix. I am trying to build an environment with R and some packages installed (inside Docker, just to avoid interfering with my system). Here is the default.nix that I'm using:

with import (fetchTarball "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/e11142026e2cef35ea52c9205703823df225c947.tar.gz") {};
{
  myProject = stdenv.mkDerivation {
    name = "myProject";
    version = "1";
    src = if lib.inNixShell then null else nix;

    buildInputs = with rPackages; [
      R
      ggplot2
      knitr
    ];
  };
}

but when I try to build the environment first, and then drop into bash that doesn't work. So when I do

but when I try to build the environment first, and then drop into bash that doesn't work. So when I do

but when I try to build the environment first, and then drop into bash that doesn't work. So when I do

RUN nix-build /home/renv/default.nix
CMD ["bash"]

I get following error message

builder for '/nix/store/1csmqrnlgbyzm5kkjw2s9q348qpx3rqy-myProject.drv' failed to produce output path for output 'out' at '/nix/store/icf4fsmlcalyc2v5wiwn88x6f7xab46y-myProject'