Actually, that is not true at all, I don't know why you're saying that. It's quite easy to set up a development environment with the build tools / dependencies

Actually, that is not true at all, I don't know why you're saying that. It's quite easy to set up a development environment with the build tools / dependencies you need: https://nixos.org/wiki/Development_Environments https://nixos.org/wiki/Development_Environments Then you can run ./configure; make; etc; at will. Or if you prefer, you can install build tools / dependencies in your profile with "nix-env", like in any normal distribution (but I don't think this is recommended).