[Nix-dev] Separating free and non-free packages, again

[Marc Weber]

I don't think this question is only about free / non-free.

Probably there are not so many packages (right now) so moving non-free
packages into a non-free directory is fine.

However glancing at gentoo I notice that they have overlays.
So they solved this kind of problem in a more general way.

Maybe we'll end up having such kind of overlays in the future as well
who knows?

Anyway what are the drawbacks creating

/etc/nixpkgs/nixpkgs-nonfree ?

Then you can choose to not checkout that repo and you're done.

If you just remove a directory every svn reset will bring it back, won't
it?

So before starting to move packages I'd like to see what makes having a
separate branch being a worse solution.

You could still reference nixpkgs-non-free from nixpkg-free and vice
versa if present.

nixos already utilizes nixpkgs.

Of course you have to merge those attr sets in the end.
This could look like this:

let directories = [ "./nixpkgs-free" "./nixpkgs-non-free" ] ++ getConfig ["overlays-directories"] [];
    existingDirectories = filter doesDirectoryExist directories;

in mergeAttrs (map import existingDirectories);

You can reference free packages within non-free using

  { system, ... }:

  free = import ./nixpkgs-free { inherit system ...; };

  non-free-packgase = stdenv.mkDerivation {
    buildInputs = free.gcc;
  }

Then it is very easy adding support for additional repositories. Just
add another path and you're done.

Then you can add an overlay directory for all those perl / python /
haskell / ruby / .net / Java / ...  packages later on.

I don't think we want every package which can be installed in nixpkgs.
Have a look at sourceforge how many packages exist..

If we start separating packages we should do it in a way which
scales in the future as well.

Marc Weber