nix-template VS templates

Shameless plug, but related: https://github.com/jonringer/nix-template

It sounds like https://github.com/jonringer/nix-template might be helpful to you. You can generate a nix expression to build an autotools package, and you can even pull the package info straight from a public repo. In the case of nix, most C-type things fall under stdenv, so that is the template you would want to use.

I barely write any C, but I've gotten very good at building C/C++ applications over the past couple of weeks by fixing broken derivations ahead of a release.

Unless you want to handwire something together or use another higher level function from some 3rd party library, your want to use this function. It is basically the entrypoint to a flake based nixos system configuration. See https://github.com/NixOS/templates/blob/master/simple-container/flake.nix for an example.

There are some templates on the official repository. https://github.com/NixOS/templates You can find others on github.

Don’t forget about the official templates. Built right into the CLI https://github.com/NixOS/templates

I am new to nix, and even newer when it comes to using flakes. I was trying out the following simple flake (based on this template), which just terminates with a segmentation fault whenever I use --impure flag (e.g. nix develop --impure)

You would probably want to use flakes. There is NixOS/templates repo with flake templates. Take a look at go-hello one.

You should consider adding this as a template to https://github.com/nixos/templates.