[Nix-dev] gem nix writes sha256 = "no hash"

[Bjørn Forsman]

On 11 August 2013 14:55, Marc Weber <marco-oweber at gmx.de> wrote:
> ruby nix overlay:
> 1) ruby script to dump rubyforge to .nix files (50.000 packages)
>    So no, I'm not going to ask to include them to nixpkgs.

The number of packages doesn't mean much to me (unless there is one
package per .nix file?), I'm more interested in knowing how big the
dump is. 20 MiB?

> 2) nix code which generates nix derivations on the fly from the dump.

I thought step 1 created the nix derivations?

> 3) a bash script you can source to augment your shell env so that all
>   packages are found.
>
> 4) some info about additional "C dependencies" which gets merged in.
> Useful for accessing mysql, etc.
>
> Problems:
> - If you need very latest packages you have to rerun the dump (its experimental)
> - If you need git based dependendies you might be in trouble
> - If there are multiple versions of a package, you have to select a
>   version eventually.
>
> Great:
> Its fast, because the dump is already there
>
> Example:
>
>
>       emproxyCollection =
>           let ro = (pkgs.overlay "ruby");
>           in ro.rubyEnv19 {
>             name = "emproxy";
>             p = {
>             };
>             names = [
>               "eventmachine"
>               "rspec"
>               "em-http-request"
>               "ansi"
>               "rake"
>               "posix-spawn"
>             ];
>           };
>
> Problem: The versions might be little bit different from what bundlers
> suggests.

Pardon my ignorance, but it sounds pretty similar to the "gem nix"
approach. Except that "gem nix" only adds the gems you ask it to (plus
the dependencies) instead of *all* gems. And that it only pulls in the
latest version. Why do you need more than "gem nix"?

> If you want to know whether it solves your problem let me create an SSH
> account on my server and grant you access (ping me on irc).
>
> Then you can give it a try easily. Otherwise use the gem command (some
> work with C dependencies) or fix the the tool causing trouble to you.

Thanks, that is very generous! But I'll wait a bit longer for someone
to say something about the "no hash" thing. I have other things to do
that is not blocked by this issue :-)

Btw, I found this very interesting page that graphs the number of
ruby/python/node/perl/java/haskell/... packages over time:

http://www.modulecounts.com/