[Nix-dev] Re: *.tar.lzma archives

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello,

"Sander van der Burg - EWI"
<S.vanderBurg at tudelft.nl> writes:

> I think it wouldn't harm very much if we add *.tar.lzma and *.tar.xz
> to the generic builder in the stdenv-branch.  It makes using the
> generic builder more convenient I think.

The issue is that these tools are still evolving and every update of one
of these tools would entail a full rebuild.  [Insert generic phrase
about how ‘builderDefs’ rocks here.]

And gzip/bzip2 still cover maybe 90% of all packages anyway.

> All these combinations work on OpenBSD (and Linux, FreeBSD etc):
>
> lzma -d < $src | tar xfv
> lzma -d < $src | tar xfv -
> lzma -d < $src | gtar xfv
> lzma -d < $src | gtar xfv -

Then let’s go for the first or second one.

> It's funny to notice that changing a single character in a Nix
> expression will trigger such an expensive rebuild.

I don’t think changing Libtool 2.x triggers an expensive rebuild.  You
could check with Nicolas’ ‘rebuild-amount.sh’ script.

Besides, you’re going to stumble upon a lot of similar issues if you
want to use the BSD tools instead of the GNU tools.  Here and there
builders use GNU-specific options (e.g., “chmod -v” in
http://hydra.nixos.org/build/99093/nixlog/1/tail).

Thus, I would suggest using all of GNU Coreutils, GNU tar, GNU sed,
etc., on all supported platforms.  IOW, only the libc and kernel would
be out of Nixpkgs’ control.

What do you think?

Thanks,
Ludo’.