[Nix-dev] Cygwin "nix-channel --update" problem. Tar won't work.

[Marc Weber]

On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 03:20:41PM -0800, Chi-Jung Huang wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I am a newbie using nix. Just got nix install on my Window XP running cygwin. Everything seems to be fine until when I started to run nix-channel update and the following message occurs:
> ============================================================
> $ nix-channel --update
> obtaining list of Nix archives at `http://nixos.org/releases/nixpkgs/channels/nixpkgs-unstable/MANIFEST.bz2'...
> 
> 6079 store paths in manifest
> obtaining list of Nix archives at `http://buildfarm.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/releases/meta-environment/channels-v3/aterm-unstab
> le/MANIFEST'...
> ######################################################################## 100.0%
> 565 store paths in manifest
> downloading Nix expressions from `http://nixos.org/releases/nixpkgs/channels/nixpkgs-unstable/nixexprs.tar.bz2'...
> 
> downloading Nix expressions from `http://buildfarm.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/releases/meta-environment/channels-v3/aterm-unstabl
> e/nixexprs.tar.bz2'...
> ######################################################################## 100.0%
> unpacking channel Nix expressions...
> the following derivations will be built:
>   /nix/store/gmlh0w60jygbxfgqrz8535wkyijpw91d-channels.drv
> building path(s) `/nix/store/gwkjfqyi50afy1y2wc37b2akvsfwj0jy-channels'
> unpacking channel nixpkgs-unstable
> /usr/bin/tar: This does not look like a tar archive
> /usr/bin/tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
> builder for `/nix/store/gmlh0w60jygbxfgqrz8535wkyijpw91d-channels.drv' failed with exit code 2
> error: build of `/nix/store/gmlh0w60jygbxfgqrz8535wkyijpw91d-channels.drv' failed
> cannot realise store expression at /usr/local/bin/nix-channel line 135.
> $

Wired. Can you try downloading
http://nixos.org/releases/nixpkgs/channels/nixpkgs-unstable/nixexprs.tar.bz2
manually, then try /usr/bin/tar xfj nixexprs.tar.bz2 ?
Also make sure you've installed bunzip2 (Don't think that this causes
this error. tar does tell you if it can't find bzip2 normally)

untarring the file works fine here.

Are you interested in using nix on cygwin frequently?
i've started writing a cygwin package once but I did never finish it. It
would be nice to have one for bootstrapping reasons. If you're
interested I can send you my initial attempt.

Sinclery
Marc Weber