nixos-augsburg-sprint

28 Jun 2016

nixos-sprint

paul and me visisted the augsburger openlab last weekend, for a nice nixos sprint with profpatsch. the sprint lasted two days and we talked lots about nix/nixpkgs internals.

nix based emscripten toolchain

we’ve been working on the emscripten nix toolchain. current status is: prototype is working and we can already compile these targets:

note: YAY, this is the first nix-based emscripten toolchain which should work on nixos but also on mac os x and on basically every POSIX supporting unix!

nixexpr grammar

we had the idea to make the nix expression language more forgiving by having it support ; at the end of a normal function body.

random example: mkDerivation

you close the scope with }; and you always need the ; which is not optional.

function call

you close the scope with } and you are not allowed to use };!

note: with this patch you are now allowed to write either } (default) or }; which is new.

mkDerivation outputs

i finally learned that we now have the outputs-feature

this means nixos/nix now supports split packages:

  • foo.deb vs.
  • foo-dev.deb

as ubuntu and other distros does.

in nixpkgs, for instance in an stdenv.mkDerivation you can now use:

outputs = [ "lib" "headers" "doc" ];

to install software into these directories! great!

summary

nice ppl, nice room. 10/10, would hack there again! huge thanks to Profpatsch and helpers.

article source