nixos-augsburg-sprint

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:

• libz
• libxml2
• json_c
• xmlmirror

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

  json_c_ = emscriptenStdenv.mkDerivation rec {

    name = "json_c_";
    version = "json-c-0.12-20140410";

    buildInputs = [ autoconf automake libtool pkgconfig gnumake ];

    src = fetchgit {
      url = "https://github.com/json-c/json-c";
      rev = "refs/tags/${version}";
      sha256 = "0s9h6147v2vkd4l4k3prg850n0k1mcbhwhbr09dzq97m6vi9lfdi";
    };
    postFixup = "echo postFixup";
    preFixup = "echo preFixup";
    fixupPhase = "echo fixupPhase";
  };

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

function call

{ foo, bar } :

{
  # function body
}

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.