works in the vast majority of cases. The problem today is dependencies on other sorts of configuration which aren't given proper defaults. We rely on the examples to crudely to set those configuration parameters in some vaguely sane manner on the users behalf. Issue [\#34274](https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/34274) tracks this inconvenience along with its root cause in crufty configuration options.
:::

While one is free to pass both parameters in full, there's a lot of logic to fill in missing fields. As discussed in the previous section, only one of `system`, `config`, and `parsed` is needed to infer the other two. Additionally, `libc` will be inferred from `parse`. Finally, `localSystem.system` is also _impurely_ inferred based on the platform evaluation occurs. This means it is often not necessary to pass `localSystem` at all, as in the command-line example in the previous paragraph.

::: {.note}
Many sources (manual, wiki, etc) probably mention passing `system`, `platform`, along with the optional `crossSystem` to Nixpkgs: `import <nixpkgs> { system = ..; platform = ..; crossSystem = ..; }`. Passing those two instead of `localSystem` is still supported for compatibility, but is discouraged. Indeed, much of the inference we do for these parameters is motivated by compatibility as much as convenience.
:::

One would think that `localSystem` and `crossSystem` overlap horribly with the three `*Platforms` (`buildPlatform`, `hostPlatform,` and `targetPlatform`; see `stage.nix` or the manual). Actually, those identifiers are purposefully not used here to draw a subtle but important distinction: While the granularity of having 3 platforms is necessary to properly *build* packages, it is overkill for specifying the user's *intent* when making a build plan or package set. A simple "build vs deploy" dichotomy is adequate: the sliding window principle described in the previous section shows how to interpolate between the these two "end points" to get the 3 platform triple for each bootstrapping stage. That means for any package a given package set, even those not bound on the top level but only reachable via dependencies or `buildPackages`, the three platforms will be defined as one of `localSystem` or `crossSystem`, with the former replacing the latter as one traverses build-time dependencies. A last simple difference is that `crossSystem` should be null when one doesn't want to cross-compile, while the `*Platform`s are always non-null. `localSystem` is always non-null.

## Cross-compilation infrastructure {#sec-cross-infra}

### Implementation of dependencies {#ssec-cross-dependency-implementation}

The categories of dependencies developed in [](#ssec-cross-dependency-categorization) are specified as lists of derivations given to `mkDerivation`, as documented in [](#ssec-stdenv-dependencies). In short, each list of dependencies for "host → target" is called `deps<host><target>` (where `host`, and `target` values are either `build`, `host`, or `target`), with exceptions for backwards compatibility that `depsBuildHost` is instead called `nativeBuildInputs` and `depsHostTarget` is instead called `buildInputs`. Nixpkgs is now structured so that each `deps<host><target>` is automatically taken from `pkgs<host><target>`. (These `pkgs<host><target>`s are quite new, so there is no special case for `nativeBuildInputs` and `buildInputs`.) For example, `pkgsBuildHost.gcc` should be used at build-time, while `pkgsHostTarget.gcc` should be used at run-time.

Now, for most of Nixpkgs's history, there were no `pkgs<host><target>` attributes, and most packages have not been refactored to use it explicitly. Prior to those, there were just `buildPackages`, `pkgs`, and `targetPackages`. Those are now redefined as aliases to `pkgsBuildHost`, `pkgsHostTarget`, and `pkgsTargetTarget`. It is acceptable, even recommended, to use them for libraries to show that the host platform is irrelevant.

But before that, there was just `pkgs`, even though both `buildInputs` and `nativeBuildInputs` existed. \[Cross barely worked, and those were implemented with some hacks on `mkDerivation` to override dependencies.\] What this means is the vast majority of packages do not use any explicit package set to populate their dependencies, just using whatever `callPackage` gives them even if they do correctly sort their dependencies into the multiple lists described above. And indeed, asking that users both sort their dependencies, _and_ take them from the right attribute set, is both too onerous and redundant, so the recommended approach (for now) is to continue just categorizing by list and not using an explicit package set.