Some common issues when packaging software for darwin: The darwin stdenv uses clang instead of gcc. When referring to the compiler $CC or cc will work in both cases. Some builds hardcode gcc/g++ in their build scripts, that can usually be fixed with using something like makeFlags = [ "CC=cc" ]; or by patching the build scripts. stdenv.mkDerivation { name = "libfoo-1.2.3"; # ... buildPhase = '' $CC -o hello hello.c ''; } On darwin libraries are linked using absolute paths, libraries are resolved by their install_name at link time. Sometimes packages won't set this correctly causing the library lookups to fail at runtime. This can be fixed by adding extra linker flags or by running install_name_tool -id during the fixupPhase. stdenv.mkDerivation { name = "libfoo-1.2.3"; # ... makeFlags = stdenv.lib.optional stdenv.isDarwin "LDFLAGS=-Wl,-install_name,$(out)/lib/libfoo.dylib"; } Some packages assume xcode is available and use xcrun to resolve build tools like clang, etc. This causes errors like xcode-select: error: no developer tools were found at '/Applications/Xcode.app' while the build doesn't actually depend on xcode. stdenv.mkDerivation { name = "libfoo-1.2.3"; # ... prePatch = '' substituteInPlace Makefile \ --replace '/usr/bin/xcrun clang' clang ''; } The package xcbuild can be used to build projects that really depend on Xcode, however projects that build some kind of graphical interface won't work without using Xcode in an impure way.