[Nix-dev] [***SPAM***] A bunch of patches to nixpkgs and questions

[Shea Levy]

Hi Jan,

On Jun 26, 2012, at 8:52 AM, Jan Malakhovski <oxij at oxij.org> wrote:

> Hello.
> 
> I've made a bunch of changes to nixpkgs that I would like to share.

Thanks for contributing!

> 
> * new-and-fixes.patch
>  * adds
>    * libraries
>      * gconfmm -- This
>      * gtkglextmm -- and this are not used by any package that I'm ready to share. They are for "lintesia" game that doesn't run nicely for me yet. Nice to have anyway.
>      * gtkdatabox -- Used by klavaro.
>    * applications/games
>      * mirage -- Pretty slow, but small and simple (!) image viewer that plays animated gifs (!).
>      * mcomix -- Like comix, but better; builtin library feature is turned off, because I don't use it (slow) and too lazy to add a on/off flag.
>      * transmission-remote-gtk -- Self descriptive.
>      * remmina -- The only VNC client I know that allows sending special keys (e.g. bound by local window manager) to the remote machine (has a special GUI button that grabs all the keys).
>      * klavaro -- Touch typing tutor that doesn't depend on a fixed keyboard layout, i.e. it's very helpful if you want to learn to touch type with your own original (twisted) keyboard layout.
>    * kernel
>      * linux-3.2-xen -- Self descriptive; I would also suggest to generate -xen versions for all the kernels automatically.
>  * patches and fixes
>    * kernel
>      * no-xsave.patch -- (xen needs this) fetchurl for no-xsave.patch is dead, I found the original version, tested it to work and placed there. Would be nice if someone who has the previous version could check that it's the same patch (hashes are not equal probably because it had comments at the top).
>    * applications
>      * freerdp -- I have no idea why the hash has changed without version bumping. This bugs me, can anyone check what have changed? Anyway, remmina needs this.
>      * firefox-12.0 -- fetchurl is dead, now fetches from archive mirror.
>    * others
>      * SDL_net -- include header fix.
>      * ati-drivers -- fetchurl fix.
>      * libdrm -- add support for radeon experimental api.
>      * libvdpau, ffmpeg -- prettify libvdpau arguments, ffmpeg support for libvdpau acceleration.
>  * I've placed all the new packages at the end of top-level.nix to prevent local merge conflicts (I have no idea how items are sorted there anyway).
> 
> * version-bump-tested-to-work.patch
>  * wine -- 1.3.32 --> 1.5.5, winetricks complains that 1.3.* up to .39 or something is buggy and should be updated.
>  * psmisc --  22.13 --> 22.19, 22.13 is so out of date that it was deleted from sourceforge.
> 
> * version-bump-xen-fail.patch -- 4.0.3 --> 4.1.2, while linux-3.2-xen works fine (for dom0) xend from 4.1.2 doesn't want to start with the current nixos-generated upstart rules. It fails somewhere, upstart job hangs in "starting" state, system doesn't reboot/halt nicely because of that. I have no clear idea why this happens. Would be nice if someone could fix that.
> 
> * compilers.patch -- allows to compile /dev/null, sounds crazy, but this feature is used in some configure scripts (e.g. xbmc). This patch causes almost complete rebuild of nixpkgs and is not needed by any current package, but it would be if I make xbmc to work. By the way, why the same file is duplicated 4 times?
> 

Wow, this is a lot of changes. Would it be possible for you to make them available as git trees with decent commit history that can be pulled from, or better open up some pull requests on github? If not I'll take a look through the patches later, but it will be a lot easier for me to see them that way.

> Now, the questions:
> * Is there a nice way to download a file, compute a hash, place the hash into the fetchurl nix-expression and to build it without redownloading the file again?

nix-prefetch-url does what you're looking for.

> * I found a pretty funny contradiction that makes me belive that some of the user dotfiles should be bulit with nix. remmina wouldn't start without a gtk icon theme avalible. Theme could be changed and/or installed (into $HOME (!)) by the user. I.e., you could not depend on a fixed (or even avaliable, if you don't bulid user's dotfiles with nix) theme in a nix expression, yet you depend on it anyway. Is there a solution?
> * I saw something like "nix-env -iA haskellPackages.xmonad" somewhere, but it fails for me with
>  error: attribute `haskellPackages' in selection path `haskellPackages' not found
> "nix-build -A haskellPackages.xmonad" works (I have default.nix in $HOME symlinked to nixpkgs). Why is that?
> 

My guess is you need something like nix-env -iA nixpkgs_unstable.haskellPackages.xmonad, if you've set up the nixpkgs channel. nix-build by default looks in your current directory, but nix-env looks in ~/.nix-defexpr unless you pass it a path with -f.

> Best regards,
>  Jan
> <compilers.patch>
> <new-and-fixes.patch>
> <version-bump-tested-to-work.patch>
> <version-bump-xen-fail.patch>
> _______________________________________________
> nix-dev mailing list
> nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev

Cheers,
Shea