Using builtins.readFile to load upstream defaults is a clever trick, but it's not allowed in restricted evaluation mode: which means it fails on Hydra, for example. Besides - in Nixpkgs - depending on derivation as inputs is considered bad practice and should be avoided.
*** NixOS *** NixOS is a Linux distribution based on the purely functional package management system Nix. More information can be found at https://nixos.org/nixos and in the manual in doc/manual.