@mdorman, thanks for your PR! By analyzing the history of the files in this pull request, we identified @cmfwyp, @peterhoeg and @FRidh to be potential reviewers.

Can you add a comment referencing NixOS/patchelf#98 so these hacks can be later removed.

Done.

Ok, the issue come from installPhase = "..." which overrides the default install phase (as intended) but forgets to call the install hooks.

A better, working patch:

diff --git a/pkgs/applications/misc/calibre/default.nix b/pkgs/applications/misc/calibre/default.nix
index 6dcd96216c..5d228d264d 100644
--- a/pkgs/applications/misc/calibre/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/applications/misc/calibre/default.nix
@@ -62,6 +62,8 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
   ]);
 
   installPhase = ''
+    runHook preInstall
+
     export HOME=$TMPDIR/fakehome
     export POPPLER_INC_DIR=${poppler_utils.dev}/include/poppler
     export POPPLER_LIB_DIR=${poppler_utils.out}/lib
@@ -92,6 +94,8 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
     for entry in $out/share/applications/*.desktop; do
       substituteAllInPlace $entry
     done
+
+    runHook postInstall
   '';
 
   calibreDesktopItem = makeDesktopItem {

It would seem a bit nicer to have something like this (it builds):

--- a/pkgs/applications/misc/calibre/default.nix
+++ b/pkgs/applications/misc/calibre/default.nix
@@ -61,7 +61,8 @@ stdenv.mkDerivation rec {
     chardet cherrypy html5lib_0_9999999 odfpy routes
   ]);
 
-  installPhase = ''
+  dontInstall = true;
+  postInstall = ''
     export HOME=$TMPDIR/fakehome
     export POPPLER_INC_DIR=${poppler_utils.dev}/include/poppler
     export POPPLER_LIB_DIR=${poppler_utils.out}/lib

@vcunat Thanks for providing the "right" way to do this in nixpkgs. I am however a bit astonished at this "best" solution. dontInstall = true; sounds like the installPhase will be skipped. It is a bit counter-intuitive. See my comment in #26345.

@mdorman Would you mind updating your PR ? I, as probably many others, would be glad to see this fixed :-).

@vcunat Well, no, your patch does not work. dontInstall = true; is strictly equivalent to installPhase = "";. The only reason this builds is because it installs nothing. Just check the produced derivation, it is (nearly) empty.

So mine seems the only correct (and hacky) way to go for now.

Ah, right, I'm sorry :-/ This part of stdenv does seem to need a redesign. Overriding the default install phase is a rather common setup. Pushed the patch from @layus for now, until we fix Qt hooks and/or stdenv.