[Nix-dev] Auto-generated expressions for applications

[lewo at abesis.fr]

Freddy Rietdijk <freddyrietdijk at fridh.nl> writes:

> Hi,
>
> At several places in Nixpkgs we use auto-generated data, mostly for the
> larger package sets like Haskell. Sometimes we also use auto-generated sets
> for applications that may need different versions than are offered in the
> main package sets. In the past months several issues/PR's have been opened
> to add rather large Python applications to Nixpkgs, generated using
> `pypi2nix`.
>
> Using such tool to generate the expressions has some very big advantages.
> However, there's also a disadvantage. The expressions shouldn't only be
> updated when there's a new release of the application, but also whenever
> there's security updates in any of its generated dependencies, which the
> application maintainer now has to keep track of. Therefore, I find it quite
> a risk to have separate package sets. At the same time, we'll also likely
> run behind in the main package sets every once in a while.

As an example, `openstackclient` needs a version of the `requests`
library which is older than our `pythonPackages.requests`. We then need
to add another version but we don't want to mix different versions in
the python packages set (to avoid conflicts). In this context, it seems
the only way to bring `openstackclient` was to provide its dependencies
as 'private' dependencies.

I think several `golang` applications are also packaged in `nixpkgs` by
"vendorizing" their dependencies.
How dependencies of these applications are managed?

> What do you think of this issue? Any suggestions how we can improve this?
> Maybe we could have a server/bot that runs update scripts and opens a PR
> whenever there's an actual diff?

I don't know how but I think it would be nice to be able to know the
python module versions that are currently used by all applications.

> Freddy
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