The Nixpkgs documentation on the linux kernel builders focused on
using and extending kernels that were already packaged, but never
mentioned that it's possible to also build a kernel almost "from
scratch".
The NixOS documentation went a bit deeper on manual linux kernel
configs, but that information wasn't particularly NixOS-specific.
This commit consolidates the information related to building the
kernel on Nixpkgs's documentation, while keeping any additional
NixOS-specific information on NixOS's documentation.
An additional README.md was created for contributor-facing
documentation.
Update instructions for manual build phases execution via `nix-shell` to
cover all phases. There is no easy way of getting those commands, so it
makes a sense to have them all properly documented.
While the word 'simply' is usually added to encourage readers, it often has the
opposite effect and may even appear condescending, especially when the reader
runs into trouble trying to apply the suggestions from the documentation. It is
almost always an improvement to simply drop the word from the sentence.
(there are more possible improvements like this, we can apply those in separate
PRs)
Replaced with python3Packages except for the following to avoid misuse of pythonPackages
1. which we need for the explanation
2. which are replaced by python3Packages as variables
This seems like a pretty easy-to-fix oversight, and it documents the
getExe function, which I never knew about until one day I saw a PR
using it. Let's include it in the manual.
* luarocks-packages-updater: init
Goal is to make it possible to maintain out-of-tree luarocks packages
without needing to clone nixpkgs.
maintainers/scripts/update-luarocks-packages gets renamed to
pkgs/development/lua-modules/updater/updater.py
Once merged you can run for instance
nix run nixpkgs#luarocks-packages-updater -- -i contrib/luarocks-packages.csv -o contrib/generated-packages.nix
I also set the parallelism (--proc) to 1 by default else luarocks fails
because of https://github.com/luarocks/luarocks/issues/1540
* Update maintainers/scripts/pluginupdate.py
Co-authored-by: Marc Jakobi <mrcjkb89@outlook.com>
---------
Co-authored-by: Marc Jakobi <mrcjkb89@outlook.com>
* doc/stdenv: rewrite manual build procedure to be closer to an auto-build
This is based on
<https://jade.fyi/blog/building-nix-derivations-manually/> plus some
more original research.
The previous version of this section did not work for your choice of
simple Haskell package, e.g. haskellPackages.hscolour, due to things
like `compileBuildDriverPhase` and other custom phases that it
does not address at all.
It seems more correct to use genericBuild in development to harmonize it
with what is actually done.
I feel a little bit like I am committing a sin by suggesting using the
experimental CLI in the manual (afaict I am the first to do this), but I
have given the old version of the command, and there are justifiable
reasons to do it:
* The noted limitations with env-vars are fixed. The one with the
non-empty temp directory was one I ran into myself and oh boy was that
not fun to debug.
* Additionally the outputs are set *before* sourcing `setup.sh`: there
is an issue with nix-shell where the original version of `$out` winds
up in `NIX_LDFLAGS` due to _addRpathPrefix, which means that resulting
executables may not run properly.
It is sad that `nix develop` propagates a wrong value of `SHELL` to
builders, though. It is equally sad that `nix-shell` is essentially
abandoned upstream, with undocumented and not insignificant differences
from `nix develop`.
For the exact script differences:
17e6b85d05/src/nix-build/nix-build.cc (L516-L551)db026103b1/src/nix/get-env.sh
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
Projects building with meson are currently installTargets. Map these
to install tags, which are roughly equivalent. This allows projects to
selectively install components.
I chose not to do nixos.{config, options} because that would make it
look too much like a configuration object, which it is not.
A configuration object I would define as for example the result of
calling NixOS, an attrset with `_type = "configuration";`.
Recreating a configuration object without evalModules is quite
feasible but not guaranteed to be correct, and not maintainable.
Meson now comes with its own set of commands for building, testing,
installing etc., that by default wrap around Ninja. The reason to
prefer using the Meson commands is that they take additional
options (e.g. setting custom timeouts for tests — my motivation for
this change).
Here, I've modified the Meson setup hook so that Meson's test and
install commands will be used instead of Ninja's when Meson's
configurePhase is used. This restriction is to avoid starting to run
Meson directly when dealing with custom build systems that wrap around
Meson, like QEMU's. We don't use meson's compile command, as it just
runs ninja, and that's handled fine by the existing Ninja setup hook.
Naturally the Meson commands don't support entirely the same set of
options that the Ninja ones did, but I checked through Nixpkgs to find
any packages using Meson that used any options that wouldn't be picked
up by this new system. I only found one, and it was just setting
checkTarget = "test", which is the default value for Ninja and has no
Meson equivalent (because we directly tell Meson to run the tests
rather than going through a generic job system like Ninja).
Link: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/113829
Co-authored-by: Jan Tojnar <jtojnar@gmail.com>
This commit adds minimal documentation of the supported platforms.
More exhaustive documentation would require producing a list of
platforms for each of the 7 tiers. This was attempted in #245368, but it
quickly became clear that that would be a long-term effort.
In the meantime, this commit adds the most important information to the
manual.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
The nixpkgs documentation mentions how to update out of tree plugins but
one problem is that it requires a nixpkgs clone.
This makes it more convenient.
I've had the need to generate vim plugins and lua overlays for other
projects unrelated to nix and this will make updates easier (aka just
run `nix run nixpkgs#vimPluginsUpdater -- --proc=1` or with the legacy commands:
`nix-shell -p vimPluginsUpdater --run vim-plugins-updater`.
I added an optional "nixpkgs" argument to command line parser, which is the path
towards a nixpkgs checkout. By default the current folder.
update-luarocks-packages: format with black
* nixpkgs manual: add an alternative example in stdenv-separateDebugInfo
This change gets rid of the indirect reference to `nix-env -i` usage
and shows how to achieve the same goal with a shell expression.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
The text was originally added [0] following an apparently incomplete
research on how everything plays together. In fact, Nix propagates
`outputs` to the corresponding nested derivations, and there is some
messy behavior in Nixpkgs that only seems to propagate
`meta.outputsToInstall` in `buildEnv`[1].
This change moves the hints on how to use NixOS specifics to NixOS
module documentation (which is hopefully easier to find through
search.nixos.org), describes the default behavior in Nixpkgs (updating
a the link to the source), and removes the confusing mention of
`nix-env`.
the last of them should not be there to begin with. we don't want
beginners to use `nix-env`, as this is known to run them into trouble
eventually.
[0]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/76794
[1]: 1774d07242/pkgs/build-support/buildenv/default.nix (L66)
Allows splicing to work correctly
from issue 211340
>> 3: Discourage using package sets like python3.pkgs "directly"
> I think about 8 years ago I introduced this and it has been a clear mistake. Since then this pattern was copied throughout. We should indeed go to pythonPackages and also move the helpers such as buildEnv and withPackages into the package set, like haskell already had before.
- FRidh
* Updates meta.chapter.md with a reference link to the usage of the package description field instead of referring to nix-env
---------
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
