[Nix-dev] nix channels and nix expressions

[Marco Maggesi]

Hi Tony,

On Sep 21, 2009, at 4:33 PM, Tony White wrote:

> Hi Marco,
> Can you say what package it is that is missing that you want to add  
> to nixpkgs?
> One of the ways that you can add your own software to the nixpkgs, is
> to create the expression for the software in the right folder among
> the nixpkgs (Need to create a new one) And you could then add an entry
> for your new expression to nixpkgs/top-level/all-packages.nix (I think
> that's the right spelling.)

Actually, this is more or less what I am trying to do, but I do not have
the knowledge and the time to write expressions that match the nixpkgs
conventions and quality standard, so I rather prefer to prepare my
packages in in a separate tree and eventually propose to merge the  
result
once I am satisfied with the result (which is not yet the case).

> If you can say what it is you want to try to add to the nixpkgs, maybe
> there is a reason why it's not there or it's tricky to build?
> You are best off following the example in the manual and if you get
> stuck anywhere, just post back and someone will try to point you in
> the right direction.

You can have an idea by looking at my nix expressions.  I just copied
everything on the web:

http://web.math.unifi.it/users/maggesi/nix/

(in this moment, some packages are in an inconsistent state since
I am working right now at my new setup).

The starting point is the file my-expr.nix.  As you see, it imports the
file all-package.nix from nixpkgs just at the top.

I'm mostly interested in packaging theorem provers like Coq, HOL Light,
Isabelle and related tools.

I didn't make these packages public yet since several expressions are  
far
from being polished (although some of them could be already good,
e.g., camlp5, polyml, scsh).  Some other packages work but probably  
break
the nixpkgs coding conventions (e.g.: hol-light, ocaml-with-srcs).

I usually run these expressions on nixos, but sometimes I need to use
other systems (mainly MacOSX and Ubuntu), so I would like to test and
migrate these expressions there too.

Hope that this explains what I am trying to do.

> Is it an intel mac, just out of interest?

Yes, Intel 32bit.

Thanks,
Marco