[Nix-dev] Auto package updating script & new wiki article

[Marc Weber]

Excerpts from Eelco Dolstra's message of Thu Feb 10 10:46:50 +0100 2011:
>   http://www.mail-archive.com/nix-dev@cs.uu.nl/msg03825.html
> 
> We should just generalise it to handle other packages as well, for instance, by
> having some meta-attributes that specify where to look for updates.
 
Sorry - I forgot about it. Maybe its time to start a wiki page ?


I've put a small list on the wiki and some features.
Please fix what you think is wrong:
http://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Open_issues:ways_of_updating_sources_automatically


 If you have a look at haxeDist you'll see that it depends on multiple
 source packages (simplified version):

let

    src_haxe_swflib = { .. } 
    src_haxe_extc = { .. }

    haxe = stdenv.mkDerivation {

      buildPhase = ''
        [...]
        t ${src_haxe_swflib} ocaml/swflib
        t ${src_haxe_extc} ocaml/extc
       [....]
      '';
 
So meta would have to reflect that - eg by allowing a list.

I still think its best to keep information which belongs together close.
And I would no longer call it close if src = .. is used top of a file and meta
at the bottom.

It is easy to miss. And I'd like to keep things stupid simple.

While evaluating nixpkgs is a nice idea in general there is also a chance to
miss sources which are not evaluated due to configuration settings.
So that's a second reason why I'd prefer my stupid simple solution of parsing
the source directly.

Marc Weber