[Nix-dev] Problem with using Nix to easy_install some python packages

[Marc Weber]

Excerpts from Kevin Chmiel's message of Thu Jan 20 19:18:27 +0100 2011:
> Any help that you can provide will be greatly appreciated.  Thanks

Hi Kevin.

The thing is you can only assign a flag after the package was put into
the env. So either install remove  python, add setup_tools and change
its prio or override it usign ~/.nixpkgs/config.nix using lowPrio and
packageOverrides. (see all-packages.nix for some examples).

I have'nt used easy intall very much. I plan to package everything
found on pypi the way I did for Haskell and Ruby: create a .nix db file
and resolve dependencies somhow on a set of packages (which means latest
versions + a some manually selected versions). But there is no usable
code yet.

You defenitely want to have a look at 
http://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/Howto_keep_multiple_packages_up_to_date_at_once

which will tell you about a convenient way to update python and
easy_install at the same time.

If you know those tools pretty well please make a suggestions which one
should be preferred so that lowPrio or such can be added to
all-packages.nix for all users.

Also don't miss that the default builder for the env is skipping some
python related files to work around collisions..

I recently tried packaging vodafone connection manager (for mobile broadband
access). I was able to start it by symlinking something to /usr and by
using my old NIX_PYTHON_SITES patch. For some reason I couldn't make it
work using PYTHONPATH only. After 40min or so I gave up without knowing
why it didn't work. If I have more time I'll try to find the cause (My
stick was not recognized anyway so I lost interest in it)

For now keep in mind that the current python implementation (eg pygtk)
works - but is too hacky in my opinion only. If you hit a case ping back
so that we can try the alternative solution.

Would you (or someone else) be interested in helping packaging all pypi
packages?

It would be terrific if could get this all working smoothly for
everyone.

Marc Weber