Installing Nix 2.25.0 from the flake is missing the LaunchDaemon plist, installs test programs that fail, and other peculiarities

[grahamc]

Describe the bug

$ nix build github:NixOS/nix/2.25.0

is a bit peculiar in that:

1. The build output is missing Library/LaunchDaemons/org.nixos.nix-daemon.plist from the result
2. The default package no longer has a version attribute
3. The default package is now 4x larger than it used to be (~110MB, ~400MB)
4. The bin directory now has -test programs, and unfortunately some of those fail:

/nix/store/9pf0gwibm5v7fy4gn8yvp730fzwc44lr-nix-fetchers-tests-2.25.0/bin/nix-fetchers-tests
Running main() from /tmp/nix-build-gtest-1.14.0.drv-0/source/googletest/src/gtest_main.cc
[==========] Running 5 tests from 1 test suite.
[----------] Global test environment set-up.
[----------] 5 tests from PublicKeyTest
[ RUN      ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_simple_from_json
unknown file: Failure
C++ exception with description "bad_optional_access" thrown in the test fixture's constructor.

[  FAILED  ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_simple_from_json (0 ms)
[ RUN      ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_simple_to_json
unknown file: Failure
C++ exception with description "bad_optional_access" thrown in the test fixture's constructor.

[  FAILED  ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_simple_to_json (0 ms)
[ RUN      ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_defaultType_from_json
unknown file: Failure
C++ exception with description "bad_optional_access" thrown in the test fixture's constructor.

[  FAILED  ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_defaultType_from_json (0 ms)
[ RUN      ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_defaultType_to_json
unknown file: Failure
C++ exception with description "bad_optional_access" thrown in the test fixture's constructor.

[  FAILED  ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_defaultType_to_json (0 ms)
[ RUN      ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_noRoundTrip_from_json
unknown file: Failure
C++ exception with description "bad_optional_access" thrown in the test fixture's constructor.

[  FAILED  ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_noRoundTrip_from_json (0 ms)
[----------] 5 tests from PublicKeyTest (0 ms total)

[----------] Global test environment tear-down
[==========] 5 tests from 1 test suite ran. (0 ms total)
[  PASSED  ] 0 tests.
[  FAILED  ] 5 tests, listed below:
[  FAILED  ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_simple_from_json
[  FAILED  ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_simple_to_json
[  FAILED  ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_defaultType_from_json
[  FAILED  ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_defaultType_to_json
[  FAILED  ] PublicKeyTest.PublicKey_noRoundTrip_from_json

 5 FAILED TESTS

Expected behavior

I expected the default package to remain suitable for installing by default in a variety of environments.

Priorities

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[edolstra]

This is fixed by #11861. In the meantime, you can use the packages.<system>.nix package instead of packages.<system>.default.