[Nix-dev] nix-env terminal

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Mon, Jan 07, 2013 at 11:02:19PM -0900, Christopher Howard wrote:
> Hello. I couldn't find a "Nix Beginners" list so I hope I'm in the right
> place. I recently installed the Nix pkg manager version 1.3 on my Gentoo
> Linux box. Right now I'm installing my first program. However, I notice
> that there is some garbled output at the beginning of the download
> description lines, as though nix-env is trying to use color formatting
> codes but they are being misread. I am using gnome-terminal, which does
> not have a problem with color formatting from Gentoo applications. Is
> there some nix-env setting somewhere I need to adjust?

nixpkgs uses a modified 'gnu make', that outputs some garbled code annoying also
in xterm (it duplicates the last character of some command lines).

The purpose of that is for the hydra build farm to get a nice 'tree' from a
build log, like here:
http://hydra.nixos.org/build/2494797/log

I've never used comfortably those hydra pages; I always go to the raw log link,
so for me that 'gnu make' patch is also a bit annoying. I guess the hydra
"pretty-log" fans are still a majority. :)

Regards,
Lluís.