[Nix-dev] translate emacs package definitions into nix expressions

[Florian Friesdorf]

Hi,

for emacs it would be great to see a tool to turn an emacs package (as
used by package.el) into a nix expression, and a tool to fetch selected
packages from http://elpa.gnu.org/, (http://tromey.com/elpa/ ?) and
http://marmalade-repo.org/

It feels the tools should be written in Lisp, like the one for hackage
is written in haskell and the one for pypi should be in python.

My Lisp is at "sometimes succeeding to change an existing expression"
but I'm happy to help with defining how the resulting nix expressions
have to look and would look forward learning lisp in the process.

I like the approach of generating nix expressions and checking those in,
as it is possible for everybody to alter these manually (if needed) and
then to explain the tool to generate those changed expressions - an
approach successfully used for the haskell packages - I think.

I would prefer installing emacs packages via nix in contrast to emacs to
gain the possibility of rollbacks.

Eventually we could have an emacs mode that looks like the normal
list-packages/install-packages but actually installs via nix into the
user profile instead of ~/.emacs.d/elpa.

florian
-- 
Florian Friesdorf <flo at chaoflow.net>
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