[Nix-dev] On npm2nix and the NPM package set in Nixpkgs

Mon Jul 4 17:34:29 CEST 2016

So far only one response...

I'm planning to implement the most pragmatic approach very soon -- due to
lack of a better/cooler name I'll rename my fork of npm2nix to node2nix.

Moreover, I will add a second attribute set to Nixpkgs allowing people to
deploy packages that have been generated with node2nix. Also, I will take
the original node-packages.json as a basis, but I will remove the library
packages that I believe that should not be in there.

Because the old package set will still be there, nobody should be disrupted
and meanwhile people can try/test the new approach.

Any objections?

Regards,

Sander

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 11:39 PM, Tomasz Czyż <tomasz.czyz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Sander,
>
> awesome stuff.
>
> I would say, change name to something like node2nix and let's merge the
> thing as it looks very good.
>
> Pros:
> - backward compatibility
> - process of merging will be lot faster (IMHO) as it will not collide with
> anything and probably this will limit non productive discussions out
>
> Big thanks,
> Tom
>
> 2016-06-22 19:24 GMT+01:00 Sander van der Burg <svanderburg at gmail.com>:
>
>> Hello Nix and Node.js users,
>>
>> I have been absent for a while in this discussion, but as far as I know
>> the state of the NPM packages in Nixpkgs is still quite bad and despite
>> some discussions on the mailing list we have not really come to any
>> consensus yet.
>>
>> As some of you may know, I have my own re-engineered version of npm2nix
>> that lives in a specific branch in my own personal fork (
>> https://github.com/svanderburg/npm2nix/tree/reengineering2). A few
>> months ago, I did some major efforts in getting npm 3.x's behaviour
>> supported, which I have documented in this blog post:
>> http://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com/2016/02/managing-npm-flat-module-installations.html
>>
>> I have been using this reengineering2 branch for all my public and some
>> of my private projects since the beginning of this year, and for me it
>> seems to work quite well, despite the fact that some of npm 3.x's flat
>> module installation oddities are still not accurately supported yet.
>>
>> I also received a couple of reports from other people claiming that their
>> projects work and even encountered some people saying that it should
>> replace the current npm2nix. :)
>>
>> Obviously, I do not want to claim that my implementation is the perfect
>> solution as it (for example) is much slower than the vanilla npm2nix, and
>> it composes the entire set of dependencies in one derivation as opposed to
>> generating a Nix store path per NPM dependency. (I do this for a very good
>> reason. For more details, please read my blog post).
>>
>> Furthermore, I have also spoken to people that suggested completely
>> different kinds of approaches in getting NPM supported in a Nix environment.
>>
>> Something that I have not done yet is investigating whether this
>> reengineered solution could be a potential replacement for the NPM packages
>> set in Nixpkgs.
>>
>> Today, I have been working on an integration pattern, and the good news
>> is: it seems that I was able to generate Nix expressions for almost all
>> packages that are in pkgs/top-level/node-packages.json. The only exceptions
>> were the node-xmpp-* and bip-* packages, but some of them seem to have
>> broken dependencies, which is not npm2nix's fault.
>>
>> If we would proceed integrating, we have a number of practical
>> implications:
>>
>> - I believe it is desired to have both Node.js 4.x and Node.js 5.x, 6.x
>> supported (I actually need all of them). To support all of these, we need
>> two different sets of generated Nix expressions. The former uses npm 2.x
>> with the classic dependency addressing approach and the latter uses npm 3.x
>> with flat module installations.
>> - I think most library packages should be removed from
>> node-packages.json: as explained in my blog post: how a package gets
>> composed and to which version a range resolve depends on the state of the
>> includer. When somebody wants their own NPM project to be deployed, he
>> should use npm2nix directly on package.json, and not refer to any NPM
>> libraries in Nixpkgs.
>> - Some NPM packages must be overridden to provide native dependencies.
>> The mechanisms that the reengineering2 branch use are different. It would
>> probably take a bit of effort to get these migrated.
>>
>> For example, this is how I override the webdrvr package to provide
>> phantomjs and the Selenium webdriver:
>>
>> {pkgs, system}:
>>
>> let
>>   nodePackages = import ./composition-v4.nix {
>>     inherit pkgs system;
>>   };
>> in
>> nodePackages // {
>>   webdrvr = nodePackages.webdrvr.override (oldAttrs: {
>>     buildInputs = oldAttrs.buildInputs ++ [ pkgs.phantomjs ];
>>
>>     preRebuild = ''
>>       mkdir $TMPDIR/webdrvr
>>
>>       ln -s ${pkgs.fetchurl {
>>         url = "
>> https://selenium-release.storage.googleapis.com/2.43/selenium-server-standalone-2.43.1.jar
>> ";
>>         sha1 = "ef1b5f8ae9c99332f99ba8794988a1d5b974d27b";
>>       }} $TMPDIR/webdrvr/selenium-server-standalone-2.43.1.jar
>>       ln -s ${pkgs.fetchurl {
>>         url = "
>> http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/2.10/chromedriver_linux64.zip
>> ";
>>         sha1 = "26220f7e43ee3c0d714860db61c4d0ecc9bb3d89";
>>       }} $TMPDIR/webdrvr/chromedriver_linux64.zip
>>
>>     '';
>>   });
>> }
>>
>>
>> Although we have some practical issues, I think none of them would impose
>> a serious problem.
>>
>> Then about npm2nix itself: Obviously, we could say that my version
>> replaces the upstream npm2nix and gets "blessed" into the new "official"
>> version, but I don't know whether everybody likes it.
>>
>> Alternatively, we could be a bit more pragmatic: I stop calling my
>> reengineering2 version npm2nix, I give it a different name and I release it
>> as a different package. This makes it possible for those who want it, to
>> still use the 'vanilla' npm2nix alongside my version.
>>
>> Then in Nixpkgs we can decide to:
>>
>> - to keep npm2nix the default and provide my tool as a package
>> - or to make the reengineering2 version the default, and provide npm2nix
>> as a package
>> - in theory: support both package sets, but this might be a bit overkill
>> :)
>>
>> For those who don't know: although my repository is a fork of npm2nix,
>> the reengineering2 version is basically a rewrite of npm2nix and quite
>> different than the upstream version. It is written in JavaScript (as
>> opposed to CoffeeScript), has a different modular structure and different
>> command-line interface, so that's why I'm very careful in proposing to
>> replace the upstream npm2nix.
>>
>> Moreover, it also does not share any git revision history with the
>> upstream npm2nix. :)
>>
>> As a final note: for those who do not know about this: the reengineering2
>> tool can already be used outside Nixpkgs and this is what I have been doing
>> for all my projects. The expressions that it generates are based on the
>> principles I have described in this blog post:
>> http://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com/2014/07/managing-private-nix-packages-outside.html
>>
>> My apologies for this very long email, but I'd like to have your feedback
>> and I don't want my preferences to disrupt other people's workflows.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Sander
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> nix-dev mailing list
>> nix-dev at lists.science.uu.nl
>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Tomasz Czyż
>
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