How to fetch Nixpkgs with an empty NIX PATH

This recipe provides a way to fetch Nixpkgs with an empty NIX_PATH. This comes in handy if you want to remove impure references to the NIX_PATH from your code base

Save the following code to a fetchNixpkgs.nix file within your project:

{ rev                             # The Git revision of nixpkgs to fetch
, sha256                          # The SHA256 of the downloaded data
, system ? builtins.currentSystem # This is overridable if necessary
}:

with {
  ifThenElse = { bool, thenValue, elseValue }: (
    if bool then thenValue else elseValue);
};

ifThenElse {
  bool = (0 <= builtins.compareVersions builtins.nixVersion "1.12");

  # In Nix 1.12, we can just give a `sha256` to `builtins.fetchTarball`.
  thenValue = (
    builtins.fetchTarball {
      url = "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/${rev}.tar.gz";
      inherit sha256;
    });

  # This hack should at least work for Nix 1.11
  elseValue = (
    (rec {
      tarball = import <nix/fetchurl.nix> {
        url = "https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/${rev}.tar.gz";
        inherit sha256;
      };

      builtin-paths = import <nix/config.nix>;
      
      script = builtins.toFile "nixpkgs-unpacker" ''
        "$coreutils/mkdir" "$out"
        cd "$out"
        "$gzip" --decompress < "$tarball" | "$tar" -x --strip-components=1
      '';

      nixpkgs = builtins.derivation {
        name = "nixpkgs-${builtins.substring 0 6 rev}";

        builder = builtins.storePath builtin-paths.shell;

        args = [ script ];

        inherit tarball system;

        tar       = builtins.storePath builtin-paths.tar;
        gzip      = builtins.storePath builtin-paths.gzip;
        coreutils = builtins.storePath builtin-paths.coreutils;
      };
    }).nixpkgs);
}

... and then you can use the saved file to fetch Nixpkgs like this:

let
  fetchNixpkgs = import ./fetchNixpkgs.nix;

  nixpkgs = fetchNixpkgs {
     rev = "76d649b59484607901f0c1b8f737d8376a904019";
     sha256 = "01c2f4mj4ahir0sxk9kxbymg2pki1pc9a3y6r9x6ridry75fzb8h";
  };

  pkgs = import nixpkgs { config = {}; };
in
  ...