[Nix-dev] builderDefsPackage and propagatedBuildInputs

[Alastair Pharo]

Hi there,

I am trying to put a patch together to upgrade the [Pure][1] package in
nikpkgs to the latest version (0.62).  In doing so, I'm also trying to
fix the package up so that [Pure's add-on modules][2] can be packaged too.

Regarding the latter objective, the main issue with the package at
present as I understand it is that it does not propagate any of its
`buildInputs`, so add-ons do not know where to look for the various
libraries and headers that Pure is built with.  I have tried to fix this
by just splitting the dependencies into `buildInputs` and
`propagatedBuildInputs`, but this doesn't seem to work, and I think the
reason is because the package's nix expression is using the
`builderDefsPackage` function.  From my very poor understanding of [the
source code][3] this function has some special way of handling
`propagatedBuildInputs` (something to do with `passthru`?), however I
have not been able to work out what that is.

[I have success if I completely rewrite the nix expression for Pure
using `stdenv.mkDerivation` instead][4], but I am supposing that my
patch is more likely to be accepted if the `builderDefsPackage` form is
retained.  As such, is someone able to help me to understand this
function better?

Thanks in advance,

Alastair

[1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/pkgs/development/interpreters/pure/default.nix
[2]: http://puredocs.bitbucket.org/#addon-modules
[3]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/build-support/builder-defs/builder-defs.nix#L497
[4]: https://github.com/asppsa/nixpkgs/commit/f92a0281fa91ae6ca0a7a7ff701706ff2d6a0508
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