[Nix-dev] Re: New `buildPythonPackage' function

[Marc Weber]

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 12:32:52AM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Marc Weber <marco-oweber at gmx.de> writes:
> 
> > Unless you add a pyCheck like feature I won't start using it :-)
> 
> Hmm, what are you referring to?
Have a look at pkgs/development/interpreters/python-new/2.5/default.nix
It looks like this :

  soappy = t.pythonLibSetup.merge {
    name = "soappy-0.12";
    pyCheck = "from SOAPpy import WSDL";
    [ .. ]
  };

It's a simple sanity check failing if the packages which the expression
should provide can't be loaded.

I added it due to the problem that soem python packages only work when
they are installed into the same place (such as ~/.nix-profile/...)
which isn't the case when building them. We already discussed several
solutions:
a) patch ipmort system. That's what I've done.
b) create a temporary installation directory which is used to build the
  package

Why might this be benefical? Because if you add a lib depending on
another it might do that import check in its configure script. And
patching the configure scripts is ugly (IMHO)..

Sincerly
Marc Weber