[Nix-dev] lipo (was: Debugging nixpkgs)

[Konrad Hinsen]

Peter Simons writes:

 > in the past, we have dealt with these kind of problems by passing lipo
 > explicitly to those expressions that need it. The 'mesa' expression, for
 > example, takes the following argument:
 > 
 >   lipo = if stdenv.isDarwin then darwinLipoUtility else null;

That's fine as well, but it seems this implies many more changes to implement the fix:
all-packages.nix needs to get that lipo-line added in various places and then
a number of gcc-related derivations need to be modified.

 > Personally, I think it would be okay to make lipo a part of 'stdenv' on Darwin,
 > but I don't feel strongly about this issue since most packages seem to compile
 > fine without it.

Nix seems to build single-architecture binaries, so lipo should in
theory not be required. But I don't see either what harm could be done
by having lipo around. For me it's part of the standard MacOS
development tools.

I don't quite see why compiling gcc/gfortran needs lipo because no
universal binaries are required, but then gcc configuration is such a
monster that it may be simpler to give it lipo rather than to figure
out how to make it live without it.

Konrad.