[Nix-dev] Where does

[Amy de Buitléir]

> Peter Simons <simons <at> cryp.to> writes:
> 
> > At this point, the proper way to go forward is to open an upstream
> > ticket and to ask them to update their software:
> > 
> >   https://github.com/mhwombat/creatur/issues/1
> 
> Thank you Peter. Actually, I am the developer of the Créatúr library
> (mhwombat == Amy de Buitléir), so I'll fix that now.

Sigh... back to square one. 

What I'm trying to compile isn't the version of Créatúr that's on GitHub,
it's a new version that I plan to upload to GitHub as soon as I've tested
it. And that version already has those updates (MonadRandom ==0.4.*, zlib
==0.6.*). So I'm back to my original problem: I haven't been able to build
this on NixOS.

[amy at wombat9000:~/creatur]$ nix-shell

[nix-shell:~/creatur]$ cabal build
Package has never been configured. Configuring with default flags. If this
fails, please run configure manually.
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring creatur-5.9.6...
cabal: At least the following dependencies are missing:
zlib ==0.6.*

I already have zlib installed:

[nix-shell:~/creatur]$ nix-env -q
. . .
haskell-zlib-ghc7.8.4-0.5.4.2-shared
. . .
zlib-1.2.8

Just to see if I could figure out what was wrong, I tried:

[nix-shell:~/creatur]$ cabal install --dependencies-only
Resolving dependencies...
Configuring zlib-0.6.1.1...
Failed to install zlib-0.6.1.1
Build log ( /home/amy/.cabal/logs/zlib-0.6.1.1.log ):
Configuring zlib-0.6.1.1...
setup-Simple-Cabal-1.22.2.0-x86_64-linux-ghc-7.10.1: Missing dependency on a
foreign library:
* Missing (or bad) header file: zlib.h
* Missing C library: z
This problem can usually be solved by installing the system package that
provides this library (you may need the "-dev" version). If the library is
already installed but in a non-standard location then you can use the flags
--extra-include-dirs= and --extra-lib-dirs= to specify where it is.
If the header file does exist, it may contain errors that are caught by the C
compiler at the preprocessing stage. In this case you can re-run configure
with the verbosity flag -v3 to see the error messages.
cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
zlib-0.6.1.1 failed during the configure step. The exception was:
ExitFailure 1

So eelco suggested that I add buildInputs = [ zlib ]; I tried adding that to
shell.nix, but that causes an error:

[amy at wombat9000:~/creatur]$ nix-shell
error: anonymous function at
"/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixpkgs/pkgs/development
/haskell-modules/generic-builder.nix":5:1
called with unexpected argument ‘buildInputs’, at
"/nix/var/nix/profiles/per-user/root/channels/nixos/nixpkgs/pkgs/development
/haskell-modules/configuration-ghc-7.10.x.nix":51:23

Here's my version of shell.nix, with the buildInputs thingie added:

with (import <nixpkgs> {}).pkgs;
let pkg = haskellngPackages.callPackage
            ({ mkDerivation, array, base, binary, bytestring, cereal, cond
             , directory, filepath, gray-extended, hdaemonize, hsyslog, HUnit
             , MonadRandom, mtl, old-locale, process, QuickCheck, random, split
             , stdenv, temporary, test-framework, test-framework-hunit
             , test-framework-quickcheck2, time, transformers, unix, zlib
             }:
             mkDerivation {
               pname = "creatur";
               version = "5.9.6";
               src = ./.;
               buildInputs = [
                 zlib
               ];
               buildDepends = [
                 array base bytestring cereal cond directory filepath
gray-extended
                 hdaemonize hsyslog MonadRandom mtl old-locale process
random split
                 time transformers unix zlib
               ];
               testDepends = [
                 array base binary cereal directory filepath hsyslog HUnit
                 MonadRandom mtl QuickCheck temporary test-framework
                 test-framework-hunit test-framework-quickcheck2
               ];
               homepage = "https://github.com/mhwombat/creatur";
               description = "Framework for artificial life experiments";
               license = stdenv.lib.licenses.bsd3;
             }) {};
in
  pkg.env