[Nix-dev] Looking for development version of zlib

[Amy de Buitléir]

I'm getting the sort of error message which usually means that I need the
development version of a package. I looked for a package named something
like zlib-dev or zlib-devel, but all I could find are these:

nixpkgs.zlib                                             zlib-1.2.8
nixos.pkgs.zlib                                          zlib-1.2.8
nixpkgs.zlibStatic                                       zlib-static-1.2.8
nixos.pkgs.zlibStatic                                    zlib-static-1.2.8

I installed nixos.pkgs.zlib, but the error persists. 

Q1: Is there a NixOS naming convention for development libraries?
Q2: Does a development version of zlib exist, or do I need to install it
manually?

The original error message:

[nix-shell:~/creatur]$ cabal install --dependencies-only --enable-tests
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring zlib-0.6.1.1...
Failed to install zlib-0.6.1.1
Build log ( /home/amy/.cabal/logs/zlib-0.6.1.1.log ):
Configuring zlib-0.6.1.1...
setup-Simple-Cabal-1.22.2.0-x86_64-linux-ghc-7.10.1: Missing dependency on a
foreign library:
* Missing (or bad) header file: zlib.h
* Missing C library: z
This problem can usually be solved by installing the system package that
provides this library (you may need the "-dev" version). If the library is
already installed but in a non-standard location then you can use the flags
--extra-include-dirs= and --extra-lib-dirs= to specify where it is.
If the header file does exist, it may contain errors that are caught by the C
compiler at the preprocessing stage. In this case you can re-run configure
with the verbosity flag -v3 to see the error messages.
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
zlib-0.6.1.1 failed during the configure step. The exception was:
ExitFailure 1