[Nix-dev] noob q: Best practice for test packages

[Daniel J Beauregard]

Hi,

I am a noob to NixOS and have had some plesant experiences so far.  I am
looking forward to creeating my first package.  In the Nixpkgs manual, it
says to add a call to the new package in pkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix.
That sounds a bit intrusive - I don't want to mess around with
/etc/nixos/nixpkgs on my system because it is updated by the nix-channel
uitility and such.

I have been looking for a way to incorporate my own test packages from a
separate directory and add it to ~/.nix-defexpr, but I don't know how to
pass stdenv as an input without incorporating into the main
all-packages.nix.  Is my goal achievable?  Am I missing something?

Many Thanks,
Daniel