[Nix-dev] Re: Question about "package sets"

[Yury G. Kudryashov]

Karn Kallio wrote:

> Nixpkgs has several "package sets" such as emacsPackages, haskellPackages,
> pythonPackages that generally group together expressions depending on a
> particular interpreter or compiler.  Sometimes they use recurseIntoAttrs 
> (
> python, perl ) and sometimes not ( emacs, haskell ) .  There is no package
> set like cPackages or gccPackages that groups expressions depending on a C
> compiler nor a javaPackages.
> 
> Is there a policy or convention as to when to form package sets
These sets exist to make it easy to use specific version of an interpreter 
(python etc.). No strict policy but you should ask before creating new set.
> and if so whether or not to use recurseIntoAttrs?
recurseIntoAttrs someSet makes nix-env and hydra recurse into someSet while 
searching for available packages.