[Nix-dev] some basic questions from a new NixOS user

[Kevin Quick]

On Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:59:32 -0700, Linus Arver <linusarver at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> But I must ask, how did you install xmonad? I tried "nix-env -i xmonad"
> but it did not work, so I looked into all the available packages and
> found "haskell-xmonad-ghc7.0.4" which is what I ended up installing.

I have installed:
xmonad-0.9.2
haskell-xmonad-contrib-ghc7.0.4-0.9.2
haskell-xmonad-extras-ghc7.0.4-0.9.2
ghc-7.0.4-wrapper

This has been installed for some time (at least 4 or 5 months) so it's  
possible there have been recent changes in the way these should be  
installed.  I don't recall particular difficulty with this installation,  
but again, it's been a while.

> Strangely, it appears that the haskell packages cannot see each other
> properly, because I cannot use any of the xmonad-contrib modules in my
> xmonad.hs, even though I've installed xmonad-contrib. I can fire up
> ghci, but I can't even load up the "XMonad" Haskell module, either.
> Strange...

> I guess this is the price you have to pay to run an exotic setup on an
> alpha-stage OS...

There is some awkwardness in the conflicts between GHC's expectation of  
package management and the way Nix is trying to establish things.  I  
believe the base package set is using an ever-increasing list of package  
depositories, and both Mark Weber and Peter Simons have attempted to  
reconcile these management conflicts via two different methods; both  
approaches are different and have different advantages and disadvantages.   
I believe Peter introduced his (more recent) version sometime around  
August of this year and so you should be able to refer to the mailing  
reflector archive circa August to see the discussion between he and Mark  
(and others) on this subject.  Mark has applied his technique (hacknix) to  
other packaging modules like ruby gems IIRC.

But in general you are correct: there be dragons here.

-- 
-KQ