[Nix-dev] how to write nix expressions for packages that have plugins

[cdep.illabout at gmail.com]

I ended up doing something a little different here.

I ended up writing a wrapper package (a little bit like the firefox
wrapper package) that installs all the requested plugins in it's
postInstall phase.

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/4713

However, this seems kind of hackish, so it would be nice if someone
could take a look at it and let me know if there is a good way to
improve it.

2014-10-17 8:44 GMT+09:00 cdep.illabout at gmail.com <cdep.illabout at gmail.com>:
>> There are two methods I've seen:
>> (...)
>> 2. create a merge nix package: A package which takes the application plus
>> all plugins requested and builds the directory layout the application
>> expects with all the plugins linked into the right folder. This package is
>> then added to the environment of the user.
>
> Can you give an example of a package in nix that is using this
> approach?  I'm interested in how to go about writing a nix-expression
> that does this.
>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 8:17 AM, cdep.illabout at gmail.com
>> <cdep.illabout at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I'm trying to write a nix expression for a plugin for a package.  I'm
>>> running into a problem where the package doesn't know where to look
>>> for the new plugin.
>>>
>>> The original package stores all of it's plugins in
>>> /nix/store/xxx-package/lib/packagename/{plugin1,plugin2,mycoolplugin}.so.
>>> It expects all of it's plugins to be there.  There doesn't appear to
>>> be any way of telling the program that it needs to look for plugins in
>>> other directories.
>>>
>>> How is this type of problem usually solved in other nix packages?
>>>
>>> The package/plugin combination in question is "fcitx" and
>>> "fcitx-anthy".  It's an input method editor commonly used to input
>>> Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (among other languages).  I raised a
>>> question about this package/plugin combination on github, but I am
>>> also interested in how it's solved in general.
>>>
>>> https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/4550
>>>
>>> I have also raised a question on the fcitx issue tracker for anyone
>>> curious:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/fcitx/fcitx/issues/179
>>>
>>> Finally, in case anyone wants to look at the the original
>>> nix-expressions, here they are:
>>>
>>> fcitx:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/tools/inputmethods/fcitx/default.nix
>>>
>>> fcitx-anthy:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/tools/inputmethods/fcitx/fcitx-anthy.nix
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Dennis
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>>> nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
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>>
>>