I'm trying to package TaskCoach (https://www.taskcoach.org/) and stumble upon a problem when running it: It cannot load a shared library with ctypes. Here is the stacktrace: File "/gnu/store/xnigri1g96wl0n14d9bfjyn7jnkn0f6c-taskcoach-1.4.4/lib/python2.7/site-packages/taskcoachlib/application/application.py", line 226, in init self.settings, splash=splash) File "/gnu/store/xnigri1g96wl0n14d9bfjyn7jnkn0f6c-taskcoach-1.4.4/lib/python2.7/site-packages/taskcoachlib/gui/mainwindow.py", line 92, in __init__ self.taskFile.efforts()) File "/gnu/store/xnigri1g96wl0n14d9bfjyn7jnkn0f6c-taskcoach-1.4.4/lib/python2.7/site-packages/taskcoachlib/gui/idlecontroller.py", line 84, in __init__ super(IdleController, self).__init__() File "/gnu/store/xnigri1g96wl0n14d9bfjyn7jnkn0f6c-taskcoach-1.4.4/lib/python2.7/site-packages/taskcoachlib/patterns/observer.py", line 333, in __init__ super(Observer, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs) File "/gnu/store/xnigri1g96wl0n14d9bfjyn7jnkn0f6c-taskcoach-1.4.4/lib/python2.7/site-packages/taskcoachlib/powermgt/idle.py", line 111, in __init__ IdleQuery.__init__(self) File "/gnu/store/xnigri1g96wl0n14d9bfjyn7jnkn0f6c-taskcoach-1.4.4/lib/python2.7/site-packages/taskcoachlib/powermgt/idle.py", line 46, in __init__ _xss = CDLL('libXss.so.1') File "/gnu/store/aws3fsg614lqr392y5pp9w65dy7gmvlx-python2-2.7.15/lib/python2.7/ctypes/__init__.py", line 366, in __init__ self._handle = _dlopen(self._name, mode) OSError: libXss.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory I had no glue at all what's going on, so I read a bit in the Python manual and tried to reproduce this in a container: https://docs.python.org/3/library/ctypes.html $ guix environment -C --ad-hoc python2 coreutils binutils less which libxscrnsaver zlib [env]# ls $GUIX_ENVIRONMENT/lib libXss.a libXss.so libXss.so.1.0.0 libbfd.la libopcodes.la libpython2.7.so.1.0 libz.so.1 pkgconfig libXss.la libXss.so.1 libbfd.a libopcodes.a libpython2.7.so libz.so libz.so.1.2.11 python2.7 [env]# python Python 2.7.15 (default, Jan 1 1970, 00:00:01) [GCC 5.5.0] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import ctypes; >>> from ctypes import *; >>> libc=CDLL("libc.so.6"); >>> libc >>> libz=CDLL("libz.so.1"); Traceback (most recent call last): File "", line 1, in File "/gnu/store/aws3fsg614lqr392y5pp9w65dy7gmvlx-python2-2.7.15/lib/python2.7/ctypes/__init__.py", line 366, in __init__ self._handle = _dlopen(self._name, mode) OSError: libz.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory So, it can load "libc.so.6", but not "libz.so.1", which I found in my environments lib folder. What's wrong here? How can I load the library in Guix? Do I have to set anything beforehand? I thought the environment would care for me. Do I need to add anything to my package definition to fix that? If that helps, I attached the first version of my package definition, it's not nice, but builds and runs (until the above stacktrace appears). Thanks, Björn